The Well-Lit Twilight Zone

!Nalby by Pete Bodo

Hi, everyone. We're now officially entering the Twilight Zone of the tennis year. The Grand Slams are over, Davis Cup is down to the final round. After the heat, humidity and nerve-jangling chaos of the US Open, weary players must now travel to Asia for the first leg of a gruesome one-two punch: competition on outdoor hard courts in Asia, followed an immediate trip halfway round the world to participate in the European indoor events. This, folks, is a killer. And to top it off, the pressure is on for those players who are on the bubble for the Tennis Masters Cup, aka the year-end ATP championships.

Over in Beijing today (or was it yesterday? Tomorrow?), three players who still entertained hopes of making the TMC - Fernando Gonzalez, Richard Gasquet, and Tommy Robredo - crashed and burned in the quarterfinals. This suggests that the race is hot - and bound to get a lot hotter in the coming weeks. Only The Big Four have qualified for the Shanghai TMC so far: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and the new-kid-on-the-block, Andy Murray. Given that I'm mathematically challenged, I called ATP stats wizard Greg Sharko, hoping to find out what the race looked like for the four remaining open spots.

"Mathematically, it looks like anybody who's inside even the Top 40 in the race table has a shot at making it," Greg told me. "It's far-fetched to give some of these guys a big chance, but we saw what happened last year, so you'd also be a little brash to deny that anything can happen."

What happened last year, you may recall, is that David Nalbandian, an umimpressive no. 31 in the race (with 150 points) in mid-September, put down the cutlery, pushed  back from the buffet table, and feasted in Madrid and Paris - winning the two major European indoor events of the fall (Madrid and Paris) to vault about twenty places into the rankings Top 10. And while that didn't qualify him for one of eight berths at Shanghai, he was an alternate (but elected not to go).

During that sizzling run, we learned that it's possible to win the last two Masters events of the season, especially if you spent the first 10-plus months of the year kicking back and having a good time (something at which Nalbandian is especially talented). And let's remember that the late season tournaments cough up some champions from among the unusual suspects (Tomas Berdych, Tim Henman and Sebastian Grosjean have all won in the grand finale in Paris).

Laugh if you will, but on indoor hard, at a time of year when so many of the top players are plumb worn out, burned out, or zoned out, anything is possible: Ivo Karlovic and Robin Soderling, two guy capable of serving their way to any title on indoor hard, perhaps even for two tournaments in a row, could end up qualifying - unlikely as it sounds. It isn't mathematically impossible. It's, like, Marat Safin is the only player ATP tour player who ain't goin' nowhere.

For some talented, nicely positioned guys, a strong finish to the year would not only land them in Shanghai, it might also do wonders for their self-image and confidence and provide a great high on which to end a year of growth. But these are also the guys who are also facing the most pressure, because the prize is well within reach for the first time in their careers. I'm thinking of Stanislas Wawrinka, Gilles Simon, Juan Martin del Potro, Fernando Verdasco, Mardy Fish, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. But in order to qualify, they'll have to accelerate through the final turn and pass Shanghai veterans like James Blake and Fernando Gonzalez,  Andy Roddick, or David Ferrer.  Some of those guys appear vulnerable, some not.

I usually get grumpy in the Twilight Zone portion of the year, but in all honesty I never paid much mind to the race. My colleague, Sarah Thurmond, spoke to Billie Jean King recently, and one of Billie Jean's laments was that the tours don't do more to promote their respective year-end championships (or perhaps it's just hard to penetrate the casual fan's radar with them?). Maybe a game dominated by four grand events just can't get enough traction for a year-end playoffs. But for us here, the Race is a great way to sustain or revive interest in the late portion of the year. So it's official - this year I'm going race crazy!

So here's an idea: why don't y'all predict the eight Shanghai qualifiers, and whoever gets it right (first) gets onto the list for that mythic piece of branded TennisWorld branded gear I've talked about. Otherwise, feel free to talk about this subject, or anything else, below.

Have a great weekend everyone, I'll be dropping by. . .