Blake Nears First Masters Cup Berth, Whatever That Means
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Three weeks remain in what could be called the regular season of men’s tennis, and for a handful of players there is a lot at stake.
“Really?” you are wondering. “Aren’t the Grand Slams over? Can’t Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal take the next eight months off and still remain atop the world rankings?”
Well, yes, but for the rest of the pack, the race for a place in the fifth-most prestigious tournament of the year, the Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai, continues into November. Federer and Nadal have clinched the top two positions, leaving eight men, including Americans Andy Roddick and James Blake, to divvy up the final six spots. Only 130 points separate the best of that group (Ivan Ljubicic, who defended his title in Vienna yesterday) and the worst (Mario Ancic, who was idle last week).
Casual fans of baseball or football have no trouble understanding how far removed a team is from a playoff berth as the season winds down. The road to the Tennis Masters Cup is not so obvious, and few people, even those who could be described as tennis addicts, understand how it works. Since the tennis season lasts so long, includes events of different sizes, and does not require every player to play the same number of events, the scoring system is, necessarily, more complex than the win-loss columns that define most leagues.
Here’s how the race has operated since the year 2000: For starters, race points, which count toward entry into the Masters Cup, are not to be confused with ranking points, which determine world rankings. The Masters Cup accepts players based in their performance in 18 events. Thirteen are required: the four Grand Slams and nine Masters Series tournaments.Winning a Grand Slam nets 200 points; winning a Masters Series event nets 100 points. Points from those 13 events count toward a player’s total no matter what — missing a tournament, because of apathy or injury, means no points.
The race also counts a player’s points from his five best performances at International Series tournaments, smaller events like the ones played last week in Vienna, Stockholm, and Moscow. The top eight scorers qualify for the Masters Cup, unless another player, ranked between eight and 20, has won one of the year’s Grand Slam titles (Federer won three this year, and Nadal the fourth, so there will be no exceptions this year).
Come October, the race can become difficult to follow. Take Blake’s predicament before he entered last week’s International Series event in Stockholm, where he was the defending champion. Blake had already played 11 International events, winning four of them and losing in the final of another. To outdo his worst performance (losing in the final, which netted him 31 points) he had to defend his title in Stockholm, which he did when he defeated Jarkko Nieminen 6–4, 6–2. The victory was worth 45 points, but those points replaced the 31 points he already had for a net gain of 14 points.
David Nalbandian, in contrast, had an opportunity to climb from eighth to as high as fifth with a strong showing in Vienna, where he was the second seed behind Roddick. Nalbandian, who won the Masters Cup last year with a five-set victory over Federer, collected most of his points this year by reaching two Grand Slam semifinals; he had played only one International event before last week (and he won it). If he had won the tournament in Vienna, he would have collected 50 points and passed Blake and perhaps Nikolay Davydenko. Instead, he lost in the quarterfinals and walked off with only 12 points. Davydenko won the Kremlin Cup in Moscow for a net gain of 26 points, which puts him four points behind Roddick, who lost in the Vienna semifinals (see chart for point totals through yesterday).
The race continues this week in Madrid, where 18 of the world’s top 20 players (minus Radek Stepanek and Lleyton Hewitt) have assembled for the Madrid Masters. One hundred race points are at stake; another 100 will be available at the last Masters event of the season beginning October 30, in Paris.
Blake has never qualified for a Masters Cup. Neither has Tommy Robredo, the man right behind him in the standings. Blake’s chances are excellent, especially if he performs well in Madrid this week. He’ll likely face a difficult second-round opponent in Dmitry Tursunov, but if he survives that, he’ll have a chance to beat two players who hope to gain ground on him: Marcos Baghdatis in the round of 16, and Nalbandian in the quarterfinals.
If Blake can maintain the form he displayed in Stockholm, qualifying for the Cup should be a cinch. The Madrid tournament, like the one in Stockholm, is played on an indoor hard court, a calm, predictable setting that suits Blake’s explosive game. Without any sun or wind, Blake made 72% of his first serves against Robin Soderling in the semifinals, an excellent percentage and, by his standards, very rare.
At this point, Baghdatis looks to be the odd man out, which is unfortunate considering he is one of the most entertaining young players on the tour and undoubtedly would add intrigue to the Masters Cup. In Vienna last week, he lost to Stefan Koubek in three sets. If he can’t do better than Blake this week, he’ll need an outstanding tournament in Paris, and perhaps a victory there, to stand a chance.