Recognising the need to prepare champions for the future, the ATP has started a Top 21-and-under event of eight youth players.
The inaugural event will be played at Milan, Italy from 7-11 November and will be called the Next Gen ATP Finals. In fact, Milan will be the host venue for the first five years.
The eight players who will feature in it are the top seven 21-and-under players in the ATP rankings and a eighth player who will be a wildcard. The eighth player will be the winner of a 21-and-under Italian event of Italian players for a tournament which will be over on fifth November.
The event will not get these young stars any ATP points but will be a prize money tournament. Let’s have a look at the seven players who qualified for the tournament and how they reached there.
Alexander Zverev not only qualified for the Next Gen Finals but also the main ATP Tour finals. He therefore had a right to withdraw from this tournament as both tournaments will be played back to back.
(Image: Steven Pisano/ CC BY 2.0)
In fact he did so on 25th October itself and with his withdrawal the automatic seven was finalised. They are as follows.
Andrey Rublev was next to qualify. The young Russian, a former French Open Junior champion is currently the youngest player in the ATP Top 50. As a lucky loser he won the Croatia Open defeating enroute Fabio Fognini.
He also had an exhilarating run in the US Open defeating Dimitrov and Goffin before running into Rafa in the Quarter finals. He certainly is a star of the future.
Karen Khachanov, also a Russian youngster had won his first APT tournament in 2016 with a win over Albert Ramos-Vinolas. In French Open 2017 he reached the fourth round by defeating Berdych and Isner.
World number one Murray stopped him in the fourth. At Wimbledon he lost to Nadal in the third round. He has tremendous promise as well.
2016 Junior Wimbledon Champion Denis Shapovalov is the third. The Israeli-born Canadian shot to fame by defeating DelPo and Nadal en route reaching the semifinals of the 2017 Canadian Open. As a qualifier he reached the fourth round of the US Open and created waves.
American Jared Donaldson and Croatian Borna Coric qualified when Francis Tiafoe lost to Federer in the first round at Basel. Tiafoe is probably the most unlucky of the Gen Next – for running into Roger Federer, not once or twice but three times in 2017. He lost all three but impressed at the US Open by stretching Federer to five sets in the first round.
Tiafoe missing out on the Milan tournament can be squarely attributed to luck of the draw and meeting Federer thrice. He certainly has a great future, though his game seems to be such that he has to take special care to remain injury free.
As for Donaldson, the young American has had two big wins this year over experienced campaigners Pouille and Bautista-Agut at the Canadian Open and the Cincinnati Masters respectively. He is the highest ranked American player among the youngsters and has reached third round at both Wimbledon and US Open.
Coric, a former Junior world Number one who had won the US Open Junior event as well was the youngest top 100 player in 2014. Coric has a 2-2 head to head versus Rafa Nadal and this in itself is enough of an emphatic statement of his potential.
He has also defeated Murray. Indians will always have a soft corner for him as his first ATP Final was the 2016 Chennai Open where he lost to Wawrinka
Hyeon Chung of South Korea was the ATP most improved player in 2015 as he moved from rank 171 to rank 51. Since then he has maintained his rank between 40 and 60. His notable wins are over Monfils, Querrey and Goffin
The seventh player is Daniil Medvedev, also from Russia. He too has reached the final of Chennai Open where he lost to Bautista Agut. His top win of career is defeating World Number three Wawrinka in the first round of the 2017 Wimbledon championships.
He appears to be a potentially colourful personality and already has had temper tantrums/several clashes with umpires etc.
These then are the players, three Russians, an American, a Croat, a Canadian, a South korean and an Italian whose name we will know on fifth November. Who will triumph?
To conclude my preview , I take a look at certain rule changes proposed for this tournament
Now while I appreciate the idea of having a Next Gen ATP Finals, I personally disapprove of certain fundamental changes made in the game. The matches will be best of five sets which will be welcome but in an unnatural change a set will end with a player reaching four games, and a tiebreaker will be at 3-3.
This was certainly not required as the mindset itself will be affected. Rather than a best of five sets with set ending at four it would have been better to have a best of three sets with games ending at seven as is the current normal and accepted practice.
In a bid to make the game faster, there will be no lets. There will be just 25 seconds gap between points and the match will start just five minutes after the entry of the second player on court. A player will also be allowed only one medical time out in the entire match.
While the attempt to speed up the game is commendable, the thought comes to mind whether this will be unfair to say players like Rafa Nadal who like to take a few extra seconds between serves. One is reminded of Clive Lloyd’s response when 90 overs a day was sought to be enforced which he thought was unfair on his four fearsome fast bowlers.
The Big Cat said “Whats the problem if we bowl 75-80 overs a day if we still finish a Test Match in three and half days”? Similarly why pressurise players who like to take say five seconds more for their serves?
Overall however, a big thumbs up for the concept of Next Gen tournament and a big thumbs down for concept of best of five sets ending at four concept. I’m hoping that this will be revisited by the ATP.
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