Novak Djokovic is absent from this week’s Paris Masters, but the 24-time Grand Slam champion looms over the tournament — and the thrilling race for the ATP Tour Finals in Turin, Italy.
The season-ending event, for which the best eight players of the year qualify, has one spot remaining after the first few days of action in the French capital, which hosts the final ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the year.
Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton and Alex de Minaur have qualified with their results in the early rounds, leaving one spot available and four players contending for it.
Lorenzo Musetti squandered his immediate chance to qualify by losing to compatriot Lorenzo Sonego at the Paris Masters. Félix Auger-Aliassime, Alexander Bublik and Daniil Medvedev are still alive in Paris, and Musetti is for now still No. 8 in the race and in line to go to Turin. Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who had an outside chance of qualification, lost to Zverev in the round of 16, eliminating him from contention.
Auger-Aliassime then cruised past the surprise Shanghai Masters champion, Valentin Vacherot, with a 6-2, 6-2 tactical masterclass. That takes him within 90 points of Musetti.
Bublik and Medvedev need to win the tournament to maintain their hopes of qualifying, while Auger-Aliassime will overtake Musetti if he reaches the final. There is one week of the season remaining after this one, with the possibility for players to earn more points at the remaining ATP 250 tournaments, in Athens and Metz, France, but the biggest wild card in this race is a player who is not in it at all: Djokovic.
The 38-year-old has won the ATP Tour Finals seven times, more than any other player. He has qualified comfortably despite playing fewer events than anyone else in the field, and he ended the U.S. Open describing best-of-three-set tournaments as his best opportunity to beat Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, the only two players on the tour who have proven too much for him on a consistent basis.
But while Djokovic has changed his tennis in the past few years — putting a greater focus on serve efficiency and aggression — his body has become more and more of a limiting factor. He reached the semifinals of the Shanghai Masters with Sinner and Alcaraz absent, but his body could not endure the intensity of the humid and hot conditions and he fell to eventual champion Valentin Vacherot. He will play the upcoming tournament in Athens, because his family owns it, but he is ambivalent toward the ATP Tour Finals, having skipped last year’s due to injury.
Whether or not he plays is a great unknown, not so much for him, but for the players outside of the top eight battling to qualify. If he does, it’s top eight or bust; if he does not, winning the battle for No. 9 will suffice.
Following Auger-Aliassime’s win, Bublik faces the already-qualified de Minaur and Medvedev meets Zverev.
