By Chris Oddo | Tuesday April 5, 2016
If the ATP season ended on Monday and broke for the ATP Finals, there’d be a decidedly different flavor on the London menu. Milos Raonic, Dominic Thiem, David Goffin and Roberto Bautista Agut would all qualify. Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Tomas Berdych and David Ferrer would not.
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Sound strange? It is.
It’s far too early to predict who will qualify for the Prestigious ATP Finals—we can revisit those standings after Roland Garros and Wimbledon have concluded in July—but it’s not too early to notice that there is an upheaval occurring on the ATP Tour. The only true aberration to the script in the first three months of the season has been Federer’s injury. Clearly the Swiss would be a lot higher in the Race to London had he not skipped February and March due to knee surgery (as it stands now, he’s 13th). But what about Nadal? The once daunting Spaniard is still in search of his mojo as the ATP heads to the clay and it is getting harder and harder to simply assume that Nadal will fix what ails him and resume his tenure as lord of the clay. Nadal has gone 132-7 since the beginning of 2010 against players outside of the Top-10 on clay, but he's lost twice to such players this season, including once to the aforementioned Thiem.
Ferrer, Spain’s second in command on the clay, has been missing in action in 2016. Now 34, could the indefatigable Ferrer finally be losing a step? It sure seems that way. Ferrer has gone 8-3 against players outside the Top-50 this season—last year he went 29-2.
It’s far too early to count Nadal and Ferrer out. With a few months of clay-court tennis on the horizon, it’s not difficult at all to imagine both turning back the clock, claiming titles and pushing their way deep into the second week of Roland Garros (would be a great story, wouldn’t it?). But for the first time in a long time, it’s not hard to picture the opposite, either.
Why has it suddenly become easier to picture Nadal and Ferrer as less than safe bets on the clay? It’s not just because each is finding it harder to produce the swashbuckling tennis that we’ve become accustomed to witnessing from them. It’s because a new crop of players is finally making waves, gaining confidence, and climbing up the rankings.
And, this new crop all know their way around the clay as well. Let’s start with 22-year-old Thiem. The Austrian is becoming a terror on all surfaces, but especially on the red clay. He has won four titles on the dirt in the last 52 weeks and possesses the physicality and the skillset that is optimal for a high rate of success on the terre battue. Traveling the South American clay circuit this spring, Thiem notched wins over both Nadal and Ferrer and went 8-1 overall.
Thiem’s progression has accelerated in the last nine months, and he looks to be headed for the Top-10 by the conclusion of Roland Garros.
The same can be said of Raonic, with the usual caveat—if he can stay healthy. The Canadian (currently ranked 12 overall and second in the race) is not a prototypical clay-courter but he can mix it up with the best of them on the surface. Having done much of his formative training on clay in Spain, he’s learned to embrace the challenge of dirt-bombing, unlike many of his larger-framed, hard-serving contemporaries. Raonic is an analytical thinker who digs into tactics and, while not a favorite to go deep at Roland Garros, should be able to hold his own and stay in the Top-five of the Race to London standings by the time the clay season is complete.
A little bit further down the totem pole fall David Goffin and Roberto Bautista Agut. Both have shown brilliant form in 2016, but will have to step it up against the elite players on tour before they are considered serious threats to the hierarchy. Could that happen this spring? Both are made for the clay and have the potential to make major noise.
And then there is rising Nick Kyrgios, who cracked the Top-20 for the first time this week and already owns wins over Federer, Stan Wawrinka, Berdych and Raonic in his brief but noteworthy career. The Aussie is 5-3 against the Top-20 this season. For a 20-year-old, that’s quite an achievement.
All of this young blood on the rise points to a very interesting spring on the clay. Nadal is the greatest champion that the surface has ever seen, but there is the sense that he has so much to prove in 2016. If he falters on his best surface this spring, what will it mean for his all-important confidence on the hard courts down the stretch? Ferrer is one of the greatest clay-courters of all-time, but the same pressure can be applied to him. Is he simply nursing injuries or enduring a bad run of form, or his he on his last legs? Berdych, at 30 years of age and currently 11th in the Race to London, could be in danger of having his six-year run of London qualification snapped. He’ll face pressure from behind, in the form of Federer, Nadal and Ferrer, and pressure from Thiem and Raonic as well.
There is one giant certainty on the ATP Tour at the moment, and his name is Novak Djokovic. But beyond the world-beating Serb, the ATP field is more wide open than it has been in years this spring. Can the likes of Raonic, Thiem, Goffin and Kyrgios continue their winning ways on the clay? Are Nadal, Federer and Ferrer going to find their mojo in time?
Like sand through the hourglass, tennis’s tides are shifting. The undertow is pulling the champions out to the deep water where the young sharks are waiting. It's sink or swim time for some of the biggest stars in the game. Get your popcorn ready.