Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and American Mardy Fish reached the year-ending ATP Finals on Thursday at Paris. The trio joins Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, David Ferrer and Andy Murray who had already qualified for the 8 man ATP Finals to be played over the next two weeks. Tomas Berdych beat Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia 7-5, 6-4 as a result of which they three booked their spots for the elite London Tournament.
Berdych, Tsonga, Fish qualify for ATP Finals
Tipsarevic needed to win the Paris title in order to be able to qualify for the finals in London but falied to do so as he went down in straight sets to Berdych in the third round. Berdych qualified for his second consecutive Tour Finals after having a remarkable 2010 season, reaching the finals at Wimbledon and semi-finals at the French Open. 2011 wasn’t as successful as he couldn’t reproduce the form of the previous year.
He went into the BNP Paribas Masters in France as the fifth seed and at the end of the third round, managed to secure the sixth spot in the ATP rankings as a result of which he booked himself a place in the semi-finals against Briton Andy Murray. Jo-Wilfred Tsonga on the other hand knew that he had secured a semi-final berth even before he stepped on court to beat Andreas Seppi of Italy 6-3, 6-4.
In the 2011 Valencia Open 500 Tsonga was seeded second and ended up going down to Sam Querrey in the second round. With this loss, Tsonga appeared to be worn-out and fatigued and his qualification to the ATP Tour Finals seemed bleak but the Frenchman came back strongly to ensure a semi-final berth. After a poor start to the season he had a creditable showing as he put out Federer in the Wimbledon quarter-finals and eventually lost to Djokovic who went on to win the title. He will be banking on this form to play well in London.
Mardy Fish on the other hand was forced to retired after leading 6-1, 6-7(6), 2-1 against Juan Monaco of Argentina because of a hamstring injury. He still qualified for the finals and is currently among the top 10 players and is hoping to give a good performance in the Finals despite his injury. “There’s no doubt about that, even if it’s torn, I’m still going to play and still try to play,” said Fish when asked if he was still going to London citing this as the 2 most important weeks in his career.
With the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals being as important as any of the Grand Slams, the 8 men will battle it out to win 1500 ranking points apart from ending the season on a high as the quality of tennis is expected to be nothing but the very best.
Tags: ATP Finals, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Mardy Fish, Tennis, Tomas Berdych
