For the first time in almost exactly two years, a player outside the ATP's current Big Four will win a Masters title—the tournament now underway in Paris, France. What’s more interesting, of course, is that three-quarters of that celebrated foursome had entered Paris, but only two ended up playing, and neither of them won a match.
That must be some kind of record, too.
Is it armageddon for the Big Four? Most people would laugh at the very idea. But this is a sobering reminder of how much and how quickly things can change in tennis. And if you’re inclined to pooh-pooh that great leap of reasoning, just think about these things:
Roger Federer is a genius, he’s supremely fit, he’s shown a terrific talent for career management. But nobody and nothing can change the fact that Roger Federer is 31 years old.
How about Rafael Nadal? Oh, the “conservative” (read: no surgery) treatment of his ravaged knees seems to be working, but this is the second time in his career he’s been obliged to take a long break from the game. The harsh reality is that if Nadal is going to remain in the Big Four, he’s going to have to play a lot of tennis. And nobody can say how his knees will respond to the challenge, even if they feel just fine during this tennis-free period of rest and rehabilitation.
Novak Djokovic, distracted by any number of issues (including the questionable health of his father, Srdjan), seems to be reverting to a former, considerably more complicated self—a far cry from the doomsday stroking machine of 2011.
And Andy Murray has lost three matches when he’s held match points in his last three tournaments. There are two ways to look at that, of course, and Murray isn’t some self-questioning nimrod who’s likely to experience a great crisis of confidence as a result of that unique anti-achievement. But his plight is emblematic of the constant flux in progress in the game, even when the surface appears calm.
The last man outside the Big Four to win a Masters title was Robin Soderling, who (not coincidentally) won this same Paris Indoors championship in 2010. I added the parenthetical because among all the tour events in tennis, the Paris Masters is the one that seems most favorable to the big men.
And there are numerous big men in tennis, with more coming all the time. Oh, a Nikolay Davydenko has won the Paris Indoors here, and an Andre Agassi or David Nalbandian has won it there. But championship roll in Paris reads like a Who’s Who of tall and rangy specimens who relied on the power game, almost always anchored by the big serve. Since 1986, when the tournament rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the tennis wars (more about that later), the winners have included: Boris Becker, Tim Mayotte, homegrown Guy Forget, Goran Ivanisevic, Pete Sampras, Thomas Enqvist, Greg Rusedski, Marat Safin, Tim Henman, Tomas Berdych, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. The few in that group who didn’t qualify as big men by height did so by playing big-man tennis.
One reason for the success of so many players 6’3” or taller in Paris is obvious, and rooted in the relatively fast surface and indoor ambience, both of which favor power servers and those who like to attack the net. But another is the awkward position the tournament occupies on the calendar.
The Paris Masters traditionally suffers more than its share of withdrawals by high seeds (Federer’s was but the latest example). It’s a regrettable fact of life that under today’s ATP rules governing tournament participation, a player must enter every Masters event; therefore, a late-stage withdrawal is the only option available to anyone who doesn’t really want to take part. This tournament may seem especially onerous to those top players who have already qualified for the year-end ATP World Tour Finals, which don’t really happen at the end of the year but at the end of, well, the Paris Indoors.
The World Tour Finals is theoretically right behind the Grand Slam events in terms of prestige, ranking points, and prize-money disbursement, but it’s also the only event at that supra-tour level that is preceded immediately by a major event. That undoubtedly has hurt the Paris Indoors—but it’s never been in as desperate a situation as faded in 1983, when the tournament was kicked off the calendar because the Pro Council that ran the game declared the site (the venerable but crumbling Stade Pierre-de-Coubertin) unsuitable for use as a professional-grade venue.
Not many tournaments have stumbled and bitten the dust only to rebound into something like a golden age, but the Paris Indoors is one of them. That’s partly because the French built the state-of-the art Palais Omnisport in 1984, and the tournament was invited to take up a new home there—if it could get back onto the calendar.
That was not such a daunting task. The tournament, originally the “French National Covered Court Championships,” has always been beloved to the French as well as tennis-minded fall visitors to Paris. It’s been the matching, autumn bookend to that great spring event, Roland Garros.
The charms of Paris in the fall are numerous. The hordes of confused tourists are long gone. The yellow and orange leaves flutter prettily to the ground in the Tuileries. It’s just cool enough to make a stroll along the Seine, arm-in-arm with your girlfriend, your wife, or someone else’s wife or girlfriend, a bracing pleasure.
French tennis officials energetically and effectively lobbied the pro tour establishment for re-instatement, and won it in 1986. Fittingly, Becker claimed the first title offered at Bercy.
This year, the collective stumble of the Big Four suggests that the title is there for the plucking for any big man who’s bold enough to take it. As late as the quarterfinals, the big still men in contention were Berdych, Michael Llodra, Sam Querrey, Tsonga and Polish newcomer Jerzy Janowicz.
Clearly, though, the magnitude of an opportunity can also effect players in unpredictable ways—a polite way of saying they can choke on the obvious chance. Berdych, Tsonga, and Querrey are out—the latter the victim of fellow big man Llodra, Tsonga laid low by David Ferrer.
The No. 4 seed from Spain is a pretty good candidate to become the smallest (5’9") of all the Paris Indoors champions, given his seeding (No. 4), his outstanding consistency, and the fact that, despite his terrific record, he’s never won a Masters title.
But if you think the big-man factor will override Ferrer’s advantage, give a good, long look to Janowicz. He’s playing Gilles Simon (who upset Berdych in the quarters) in the semis, and the winner gets either Ferrer or Llodra. Given the history of the Paris Indoors, the idea that the 21-year-old Pole might earn his first ATP title at a prestigious Masters event isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem.