With the finals of Vienna and St. Petersburg being played today, there’s only two more weeks where players can qualify for the year-end championship, namely Basel/Valencia next week, and the last Masters 1000 event of the year in Paris.

This week, two events are being played, one in Vienna and one in St. Petersburg.  Last year, Jurgen Melzer, an Austrian won Vienna, while Mikhail Youzhny won St. Petersburg.  In both case, the winner came from the country which is a nice feeling for the player (just as Federer will want to win Basel).

Vienna had the more interesting of the two finals pitting Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who is currently 8th (and last), to qualify for the year-end championship and Juan Martin del Potro who is currently ranked 15 and has an outside shot to be in the top 8, though he needs a huge win either next week or in Paris or both.

del Potro actually leads the head-to-head 3-0 over Tsonga, but the two haven’t played since 2009 which was del Potro’s best year.  Even 2008 was a pretty good year for del Potro, as it was his breakout year (while everyone was playing the Olympics).  Meanwhile, Tsonga has bounced in and out of the top ten mostly battling injuries and so his level mainly depends on how much play he’s had recently.  Arguably, this year has been one of Tsonga’s best years.  He’s beaten Federer twice.  He’s maturing as a player.

Meanwhile, del Potro’s rise to the top, which was meteoric at the start of the year, appears to have stalled some.  That is, we expect del Potro to be top 10, but he’s struggled to beat enough players to make that happen.

He’s lost early since Wimbledon.  He reached the third round of the US Open losing to Simon.  He didn’t play much after that until Stockholm where he was upset by James Blake.  But in Vienna, del Potro beat Petzschner, Haas, and Anderson to reach the finals

You would think that Tsonga would be a good matchup for del Potro.  He has a hard serve.  He has a very good forehand.  But del Potro must have the mental edge in their past meetings.

del Potro took the opening set 7-6 in a tiebreak.  However, Tsonga came back to take sets 2 and 3, 6-3 and 6-4.  Although Tsonga gets 250 pts for winning Vienna, he can only count two of his ATP 250 results since rankings are based on a  best-of 18 with rules about how many small tournaments can be used in his ranking.  Tsonga has to replace a finalist result (150 pt) with his win (250 pt) for a net gain of 100 pts.

Meanwhile, del Potro finished out of the top 30 in 2010 which means he falls under different rules.  While the top 30 are obligated to play Masters 1000 events and thus limit how many ATP 250 and ATP 500 events, del Potro can basically count many of his ATP 250 results since he’s not obligated to play the Masters 1000 events.  Currently, he has 5 ATP 250 events, his worst being 20 pts from Sydney.  He can pick up 130 pts (150 pts from being a finalist minus 20 pts for dropping his worst 250 event).  It gets a bit more complicated because he plans to play the next two weeks, which means fewer and fewer ATP 250 events will count, but by and large that helps del Potro.

Tsonga should move up to number 7 in the year end race ahead of Fish.  del Potro has to earn about 800 points to just be in the conversation.  This means two amazing performances in Valencia (his next event) and Paris.  He practically has to win Valencia and reach the semis of Paris, or reach the finals of Paris and the finals of Valencia to come close.  Valencia, fortunately, is the weaker or the two ATP 500 events next week with 3 of the top 4 men playing (Nadal is not playing either Valencia or Basel–he usually skips it).

St. Petersburg

Janko Tipsarevic was hoping to pull the trifecta.  He won his first tournament about a month ago in Kuala Lumpur.  He followed that with a win in Moscow over his Serbian teammate, Viktor Troicki.  But this week’s opponent was one that Tipsarevic admits gives him a lot of trouble.  Tipsarevic was once asked who his three toughest opponents were.  Number 1, he said, was Rafael Nadal.  He said no matter what he does, no matter how well he plays, he thinks it’s just too tough to beat Rafa.  Number 2, surprisingly, was not someone like Federer or Djokovic, but Marin Cilic.  His head-to-head at the time was 1-5 (he was asked this question before Wimbledon this year, so it was still 1-5 heading into the finals).  He said that, for such a tall guy, he covers the court really well and that made it tough for him.  Indeed, it’s Cilic’s court movement that lead many to predict that he might surpass other tall players like del Potro or Querrey though Cilic doesn’t have nearly the firepower (off either the serve or forehand) nor the fight that del Potro has.

In case you’re curious, number 3 in Janko’s list was himself.  He felt it was tough to mentally stay tough day-in and day-out although he was getting better.

Cilic, alas, got the better of Tipsarevic again winning 63, 36, 62.

Tipsarevic was ranked around 50 at the start of the year, so he’ll be able to replace one of his ATP 250 results with his 150 pt finalist result.  However, he’ll have to drop 90 point result so he gets a net gain of only 60 pts.

Cilic, by contrast, was in the top 20 when the year started, so being in the top 30, he has to count Masters 1000 results.  He can only count a max of 2 ATP 250 events.  By winning, he gets 250 points, but drops one of his 150 previous results for a net of 100 points.  That should move him back into the top 20 at around 18 in the world.

Next Week

Two ATP 500 events are held.  Basel and Valencia.  Basel has the firepower with 3 of the top 4 men playing: Federer, Djokovic, and Murray.  Murray took a late wildcard.  His original intent was to skip this week and just play Paris.  In the past, he’s played Valencia.  As the number 3 player in the world, he’s the number 2 seed, but Federer is in his half of the draw.  Federer is defending champ.

Valencia has Spaniards and Frenchman, including nearly all the top Spanish players not named Nadal and Tsonga, Monfils, and Simon.  David Ferrer is defending champ.