Paris is the last event of the year prior to the ATP World Tour Finals in London which invites the top 8 qualifiers.  This is a Masters 1000 event which offers the most points after the Slams (not including the year-end final).

Deciding who has qualified in the top 8 is a bit complex, because you have to find all possible ways for all those who have not qualified and make sure they can not actually qualify.

The current top 8 on the list are:

  1. Novak Djokovic (13,295)
  2. Rafael Nadal (9,375)
  3. Andy Murray (7,200)
  4. Roger Federer (5,670)
  5. David Ferrer (4,300)
  6. Tomas Berdych (2,940)
  7. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (2,935)
  8. Mardy Fish (2,875)

The top 5 players have already qualified.  Only 3 have not: Berdych, Tsonga, and Fish.

The 9th ranked player is Nicolas Almagro who has 2,370 points and trails Fish by 505 points.  In a Masters 1000 event, the winner gets 1000 points and the runner up gets 600 points.  Since Almagro is in ninth place, he needs to reach the finals, at the very least, to have a chance, and that’s assuming none of the players ahead of him earn any points.  If you let someone else be champion (say, Tipsarevic) and let Almagro be runner up, the two of them might move Tsonga and Fish off the list.  However, there’s no way to distribute the points so that three players are knocked off the list.

Because of this, it seemed like Berdych must have qualified.  After all, Berydch has the most points of the three that haven’t qualified (Berdych, Tsonga, Fish).  Indeed, the ATP announced that Berdych had qualified last week.  However, they had to retract that claim.

Why?

Although only two players not in the top 8 can (potentially) make it into the top 8, Fish and Tsonga could move ahead of Berdych.  If they win 2 rounds and Berdych loses immediately, then a player that wins can qualify, or a player like Almagro could be a finalist and barely move past Berdych.

Gael Monfils, ranked 14th in the year-to-date points, is the lowest ranked player that can make the year-end championship since he trails Mardy Fish by less than 1000 points.  Notice it’s important that we’re talking about the year-to-date points, not the ATP points which would include Monfils’s finalist points from last year, and he has to hope Fish loses immediately, otherwise, there’s no chance even if Monfils wins.  Monfils is behind both Berdych and Tsonga, so he can’t catch up to either player.

Andy Roddick can’t even hope for that.  He trails Fish by more than 1000 points, so all he can do is hope to gain a few points for next year.

Janko Tipsarevic is the lowest ranked player that can get into the year-end championship if he wins Paris.  Tipsarevic has 2305 points.  Add 1000 and that would be 3305.  If Tipsarevic wins, then the best-case scenario is one of Berdych, Tsonga, and Fish are finalists while the other two are semifinalists.  Tipsarevic would have more points than whichever 2 are semifinalists.  That’s because Berdych, who is currently the highest ranked of the players that have yet to qualify would have 2940 + 360 = 3300 points or 5 points short of Tipsarevic.

Gilles Simon has 2,155 points.  Winning would put him at 3,155.  In theory, if Fish was runner-up, and Berydch and Tsonga were semifinalists, all three could still be ahead of Gilles Simon despite Simon winning the title.  However, because the draw has already come out, it’s already been determined that Simon and Fish could meet in the round of 16.  For Simon to win, he’d have to beat Fish which would mean Fish would only gain 90 points, and Simon would still qualify ahead of Fish.

For Berdych, Tsonga, and Fish, the key is to stay ahead of the other two, or at least, one of the other two.  Most likely, no player ranked below 8 can win the title or reach the finals, and they must do this just to qualify.  Last year, Soderling won Paris, but he was ranked 5th or so, and thus, he was already in the year-end finals.

Fish is the one is the most danger, but Almagro would have to play exceptionally well to knock him out of 8th, so more than likely, the top 8 are the ones that will appear in the year-end championship.

The only twist is whether Djokovic will opt to sit out the rest of the year, in which case, 9th becomes and important spot.  In this case, the goal is to do better than Almagro, and that’s quite feasible for many of the other players.

So we’ll have to wait and see!  In the meanwhile, Berdych has not qualified, but probably will.