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The story of the ninth ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament of 2017

If Paris taught us anything, it's to expect the unexpected
Unpredictability wins the day
When Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray played an epic final in Doha in the opening week of the season, it looked like the top two players of 2016 would again dominate 2017. Instead, the season was more like a permanent ‘Throwback Thursday’ with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer smothering the majors and Masters 1000s. At the other end of the spectrum, we also had 20-year-old German Alexander Zverev emerge as Disrupter-in-Chief, winning two Masters 1000 crowns among five titles, rising to World No. 4 and leading the crop of Next Gen stars.
So the Rolex Paris Masters was a fitting finale to the regular season as it threw in more than its share of surprises, not least a final between American Jack Sock and Serbian qualifier Filip Krajinovic, who started the year at No. 234 in the Emirates ATP Rankings. Krajinovic came within one match of becoming the first qualifier to win an ATP Masters 1000 title since Albert Portas in 2001. Sock, who had won just four of 11 matches since the Coupe Rogers in early August, saved his best tennis for the last week of the regular season to end the streak of European players winning the past 69 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 titles.
It ain't over till it’s over
It’s not unusual for results at the Rolex Paris Masters to determine the final place or two at the Nitto ATP Finals. Two singles spots were up for grabs this year and the first was secured with little surprise by David Goffin, who was 8th in the Emirates ATP Race To London. But the second berth came with a little more drama. Pablo Carreno Busta (9th), Sam Querrey (11th) and Kevin Anderson (12th) were next in line to qualify, but after opening-round losses, attention turned to Juan Martin del Potro and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
And then there was Jack Sock, who was so far back at 24th that not even he knew that he had a chance to make it to London. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the final picture wasn’t confirmed until the last piece was placed: his three-set win over Krajinovic in Sunday’s title match, the final set of the 2017 regular season.
Watch out for Delpo in 2018
Juan Martin del Potro mounted a stunning late-season run at a London berth but agonisingly fell one match short in Paris. The Argentine would have qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals had he beaten John Isner in the Paris quarter-finals.
Despite the disappointment of seeing Del Potro miss a London spot, the Argentine’s army of fans have every reason to believe that the ‘Tower of Tandil’ will entrench himself in the Top 10 next year and cause a lot of headaches for the game’s top-ranked players.
Kubot & Melo are the team to beat
After winning their sixth title of 2017 in Paris to shore up their lead at head of the Emirates ATP Doubles Race To London, Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo are definitely the team to beat at the Nitto ATP Finals. They will take a 1,270-point lead over Henri Kontinen & John Peers into London, stamping them as hot favourites to finish the season as the world’s No. 1 team.
Not all fairytales come true
There was no shortage of unexpected feel-good stories at the BNP Paribas Masters. But Julien Benneteau’s potential fairytale was perhaps the biggest one that that got away. At 35, the clock is ticking on the Frenchman’s quest to break a stat that surely must stick in his craw: his 0-10 record in ATP World Tour finals. Had Benneteau been able to beat Sock in the semi-finals, he would have had every opportunity to break the drought in front of French fans against qualifier Krajinovic in the final. Still, the wild card had a tournament to remember, taking out Tsonga, Goffin and Marin Cilic to reach the semis.

Marking the end of a 2017 regular season that has thrown up plenty of surprises, the Rolex Paris Masters saw a continuation of a theme, with the year’s Masters 1000 events serving up a wholly different narrative to their Grand Slam counterparts. While Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal reigned supreme in the four biggest tournaments of the year, the Masters 1000 scene has witnessed the emergence of a clutch of players who lay outside the Top 15 at the start of the year. Alexander Zverev took the Rome and Montreal titles after starting out 24th in the world in January, and Cincinnati winner Grigor Dimitrov and the newly crowned Rolex Paris Masters champion Jack Sock began the season in 17th and 23rd respectively.

On the basis of this year’s Masters 1000 tournaments, there is a changing of the guard taking place, albeit a gradual one, as the age of the season’s three first-time winners shows: Zverev is 20, while Dimitrov is 26 and Sock a year younger at 25. And they have not been the only young players to get themselves noticed. The 24-year-old Dominic Thiem made the final in Madrid, the 22-year-old Nick Kyrgios did likewise in Cincinnati, and Filip Krajonovic caught everyone off guard by finishing a runner-up to Sock in Paris.

Their progress should be closely monitored in the coming months, and though it is far from certain that they will sweep the old guard aside, the signs are there. Time is on their side, while age and/or injuries are catching up with the game’s thirty-something icons, undermining their ability to win and achieve consistency.

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ROLEX PARIS MASTERS @RolexPMasters
Une victoire au #RolexPMasters et beaucoup de premières pour @JackSock

18:55 - 5 nov. 2017
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A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME IN 2018?

The new wave have made the most of every opportunity afforded to them by the Big Four in general and by Federer and Nadal in particular, snatching four Masters 1000 titles this year. That figure is as many as the game’s dominant quartet gave up in the previous six seasons, when Cilic won Cincinnati in 2016, Tsonga in Toronto in 2014, Wawrinka in Monte-Carlo in 2014 and Ferrer at the Rolex Paris Masters in 2012.

The next step for the game’s young guns is to win major titles by beating the Big Four. Zverev showed them the way by respectively seeing off Novak Djokovic and Federer to win the Rome and Montreal finals. Meanwhile, Thiem, Denis Shapovalov and Nick Kyrgios have all beaten year-end world No1 Nadal at Masters 1000 events this season (at Rome, Montreal and Cincinnati respectively), albeit without managing to kick on and win those tournaments.

It remains to be seen if they can kick on and replicate their Masters 1000 form over five sets in the Grand Slams, where Federer and Nadal have been in a class of their own this year and where the losing finalists (aside from Nadal at the Australian) have been Stan Wawrinka, Kevin Anderson and Marin Cilic, who at 29, is the only under-30 of them all. Yet with Zverev ranked No3 in the world, Thiem No4, Dimitrov No6 and Jack Sock No9, the young wolves have laid down important markers this year. Having whet their appetites in the Masters 1000s this season, they will be anxious to hunt down their elders in 2018.