It might be late October, but there are more storylines this week in tennis than pumpkins at the farm stand.
The final official event on the WTA calendar kicked off Sunday. The tour finals features the top eight women in the world — sans No. 1 Simona Halep, who is out with an injury.
The men’s season finale is still two weeks away, with three of the eight qualifiers for the ATP Finals yet to be determined. Things will clarify somewhat this week, with ATP 500 tournaments in Basel and Vienna.
Here’s a closer look at what is on the line for both the men and women:
WTA Finals
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American Sloane Stephens beat Naomi Osaka 7-5, 4-6, 6-1 in an impressive victory at the WTA Finals in Singapore.
On Monday, perhaps the most intriguing matchup of the tournament unfolded as the last two women to hoist the US Open singles trophy, 2017 champion Sloane Stephens and this year’s winner, Naomi Osaka, clashed.
Stephens won the 2½-hour, three-set struggle in what looked a lot like a statement match.
It came a day after defending champion Caroline Wozniacki fell in her opener. If there was no clear-cut favorite to win this tournament from the outset, it now looks that much more unpredictable.
The lower seed has won each of the four matches so far, including No. 8 Kiki Bertens, who beat No. 1 Angelique Kerber in three sets Monday.
On Tuesday, Wozniacki will face Petra Kvitova, while Elina Svitolina takes on Karolina Pliskova.
Swiss Indoors Basel
Roger Federer is making his return to competition at Basel, and it couldn’t come at a better place given the Swiss champ’s recent history. While still ranked No. 3, Federer hasn’t won a tournament in the second half of this year. He fell to Australian journeyman John Millman in the fourth round at the US Open and struggled in his last outing in Shanghai, where after a couple of three-set struggles, he fell to Borna Coric in the semifinals — the second time Fed has fallen to the Croatian this season.
Nobody, especially a great competitor like Federer, enjoys looking bad in front of his hometown fans. So Federer, the eight-time champion and top seed in Basel, will be hard-pressed to continue his dominance. Stan Wawrinka and No. 3 seed Marin Cilic ended up in the bottom half, which is good news for Federer, but he could meet Millman and/or Stefanos Tsitsipas and Daniil Medvedev along the way.
Cilic will be motivated. With a good showing, he could clinch a berth in the ATP Finals, where he’d have a chance to improve on a career 0-6 record in the year-enders.
Erste bank open 500
Aside from Cilic, most of the qualifying for the ATP Finals will happen in Vienna, where seven of the top eight seeds are all in the hunt for one of the three places still up for grabs. The contenders are Kevin Anderson, Dominic Thiem, John Isner, Kei Nishikori, Coric, Fabio Fognini and Kyle Edmund.
Anderson and Coric started strongly Monday, each prevailing in three sets.
ATP Players to watch
True, the big cats were idle last week, either still nursing injury (Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray) or keeping their powder dry (Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer). But the winners of the tour events were hardly the usual suspects. All three are young, carry big games, and are on the cusp of breaking out in a big way.
Great Britain’s 23-year-old Edmund bagged his first ATP title at Antwerp, 22-year-old Karen Khachanov prevailed in Moscow and 20-year-old Tsitsipas also broke through to grip his first trophy, in Stockholm. He’s now No. 2 behind No. 5 Alexander Zverev in the #NextGen 21-and-under group. Also keep in mind 22-year-old Daniil Medvedev, who lost to Khachanov in the Moscow semis, has won three titles in this year.
By the time Djokovic and Nadal return to the fray at the Paris Masters 1000 at the end of the month, the game might look a lot different than it did even a month ago.
“You have to almost get your first [title] out of the way, and do it, rather than just thinking it will happen,” Edmund told ATP personnel after winning his first title. “I think it’s going to help me in the future.”
Pundits have been predicting a changing of the guard in the men’s game — a polite way of forecasting the demise of the Big Four — for some time now. It seems to be taking place, but not exactly the way we expected.