For the twelfth and final time, the ATP Finals will be staged at London’s O2 Arena. And due to the pandemic lockdown, it will be held without fans.
Round-robin play commences today. After three rounds, the top two players from each group of four will advance to Saturday’s semifinals. Group London play their first matches today, which consists of Roland Garros champion Rafael Nadal, US Open champion Dominic Thiem, defending champion Stefanos Tsitsipas, and the ATP’s winningest player in 2020, Andrey Rublev. Tomorrow, Group Tokyo will take the court, which features Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic, Paris Masters champion Daniil Medvedev, US Open finalist Sascha Zverev, and Rome Masters finalist Diego Schwartzman.
A year ago at this event, Stefanos Tsitsipas defeated Dominic Thiem in an excellent championship match, decided by a third set tiebreak. Today they will play the first singles match of the tournament, in their first meeting since last year’s final. During the evening session, Rafael Nadal will begin his tenth attempt at winning this elusive title, the most glaring omission on his amazing resume. He’ll face Andrey Rublev, who is making his ATP Finals debut after leading the tour with five titles and 40 match wins this season.
Dominic Thiem (3) vs. Stefanos Tsitsipas (6)
Despite his loss at the end of last year’s tournament, it was a great run for Thiem, who defeated both Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in round-robin play. Also despite that loss, Dominic owns a 4-3 record against Tsitsipas, and a 3-2 edge on hard courts. Thiem had a great year at the Majors in 2020: he was a quarterfinalist at Roland Garros, the runner-up in Melbourne, and won his first Slam at the US Open. But outside the Majors, Dominic is a meager 5-5 this season. He only played one event and three matches during the indoor hard court season, losing to Andrey Rublev in the quarterfinals of Vienna. He did not play the Paris Indoors due to a foot blister, but has stated that’s no longer an issue. Tsitsipas didn’t fare as well as Thiem at this year’s Slams, but has accumulated 28 match wins and reached three tour finals. He went just 1-2 on indoor hard courts this past month, so neither player arrives with much momentum. But in this battle of one-handed backhands, Tsitsipas should be slightly favored, as he’s the better player on indoor hard courts. Four of his five career titles have come on indoor hard courts, while Thiem actually has a losing record in his career at this event.
Rafael Nadal (2) vs. Andrey Rublev (7)
This will be only their second career meeting, with the first taking place over three years ago. In the quarterfinals of the 2017 US Open, Nadal dropped only four games to comfortably dismiss Rublev. That was Andrey’s breakout Major. A back injury the following year deterred his progress, but now he’s one of the ATP’s most reliable performers. In addition to his five titles this year, he reached the second week at all three Majors. And notably, four of his titles came on hard courts. While Nadal’s 2020 highlight of course was winning his 20th Major at the French Open, he’s compiled an impressive 16-4 record this year on hard courts. But this indoor hard court event at the end of the tennis calendar has been a struggle for Nadal. He’s missed or retired from this tournament due to injury five of the last eight years. And he hasn’t advanced out of the round-robin stage since 2015. Facing this year’s best hard court player will not be an easy start. Though Rublev will surely be nervous for ATP Finals debut, he’s won three of his last five matches against top five opposition (as per Tennis Abstract). Those two losses were to Daniil Medvedev, a tricky matchup for Rublev due to their lifelong friendship. So it would not be surprising to see Rublev pull off the upset on Sunday. His game is better suited for these conditions than Nadal’s.
Other Notable Matches on Day 1:
Australian Open champions Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury (2) vs. Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo, who won two ATP titles this year.
Roland Garros champions Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies (3) vs. Wesley Koolhof and Nikola Mektic (5), who lost to Krawietz and Mies in the Roland Garros semifinals.
Full order of play is here.