The unexpected race for the top spot in the ATP World Tour rankings highlights this week’s action as the ATP makes its final regular stop for the 2016 season in Paris for the BNP Paribas Masters. Andy Murray continued his second half assault on world number one Novak Djokovic as he picked up the Eerste Bank Open title on Sunday in Vienna. That victory closed the gap between Murray and Djokovic to just 415 points. It’s an astounding turn of events when you consider Djokovic was up nearly 8,000 points over Murray after winning the french Open. That was only about five months ago.
Since then, it’s been the Andy Murray show on tour with the Scot dominating with a 44-3 mark and grabbing his third career Grand Slam win with the title at Wimbledon. Djokovic? He’s gone MIA due in part to injury and more so due to mental fatigue. The Serb was bounced in the third round at Wimbledon, where the injuries began to pop up. He did win the Rogers Cup during the summer, but then was bounced in the opening round of the Rio Olympics by a resurgent Juan Martin Del Potro. Djokovic’s mood continued to be questioned as he made one of the more odd runs to the U.S. Open final with retirements or withdrawals fueling three of his six wins.
In the final, he was outplayed by Stan Wawrinka and again the injury questions cropped up as he could not match the Swiss in a disheartening four set loss. It wasn’t long after that loss that Djokovic finally admitted to the world that he had lost his passion for the game and was having difficulty enjoying his time on court. So here he is now with some rest and recovery after losing in the semifinals at the Shanghai Masters to Roberto Bautista Agut with his #1 ranking on the line. The spot he has held for consecutively since July 2014. He is your top seed and three-time defending champion in Paris this week.
If he’s mentally focused for the week, this could be the spot for him to dig in. He’s 26-6 in Parus during his career, by far sporting one of the best records in the field this week. Murray is slotted as the second seed with a 17-9 mark, but has only made the final once here. That came last year when he lost to Djokovic. Prior to that, Murray had never advanced past the quarterfinals at this tournament. Rounding out the top four seeds this week are Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic. Wawrinka’s best effort in Paris also came last year with a semifinal run, while Raonic made the final in 2014.
The top eight seeds for the week are Djokovic, Murray, Wawrinka, Raonic, Kei NIshikori, Dominic Thiem, Tomas Berdych and David Goffin. Berdych sports the next best record among the seeds in Paris for his career at 25-10 with one title in 2005. Other previous winners of this tournament in the seeded field include 11th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (2008) and 15th seed David Ferrer (2012).
Paris traditionally has been a seeded paradise with seeds making up the entire quarterfinal field each of the last three seasons. You have to go back to 2012’s crazy BNP Paribas Masters to find the last time that a non-seed made some noise. That year, top seed Roger Federer withdrew from the tournament to rest fo the year-end Tour Finals. Novak Djokovic lost his first match as the second seed and it was qualifier Jerzy Janowicz who stunned the world with a run to the final before ultimately losing to fourth seed David Ferrer.