2010 ATP World Tour Finals: Friday's Order of Play Preview
The prestigious 2010 Barclay’s ATP World Tour finals, the end of year event, will be drawing to a close this week on Sunday. The stage has been set with two players, Roger Federer and Andy Murray, already qualifying for the semi-finals as the last four.
The final round robin matches will take place on Friday at the O2 Arena in the East End of London, and these matches will determine the two players from Group A who will take part in the semi-finals. Group B's matches have already concluded, with the second
and fifth seed qualifying.
The first match will be played between World Number 1, Rafael “Rafa” Nadal and World Number 6 Tomas Berdych. The Spanish top player Rafa leads their head to head record with eight wins out of the eleven matches that the two Top Ten players have had against
each other. Although, the Czech Number 1 has had success at three of the first four matches which the two players combated in against each other, Nadal has not lost a match to him since 2007. Since the beginning of that year’s season, Nadal has had a 7-0 record
against the Czech player. He has not lost a set to Berdych in more than four years; he has 17 winning sets and only three tie-breaks against the player.
In the event that the 24 year old Nadal defeats Berdych for the eighth time in a row, he will emerge from the day as a qualifier for the event's semi-finals, and Group Winner. Even if in the unlikely event that Berdych is in top form and Nadal fumbles his
game to lose the match, the Spaniard will still have a great chance of making to the semi-finals of the event. Meanwhile, if Tomas Berdych loses the match in three sets and Andy Roddick is able to defeat Novak Djokovic in straight sets, Berdych will make it
to the semi-finals as well.
The second match of the day will feature the World Number 3 Novak “Nole” Djokovic competing against America’s Number 1 Andy Roddick, who is the eighth seed of the tournament. Roddick is leading their head to head record in the competition, with five wins
to two losses. As a matter of fact, Roddick has only lost two of their first three meetings, after which he has dominated the Serbian player since the beginning of 2009. He has only lost one set to Nole in four consecutive victories. What benefits Roddick
in this draw is his near-immunity on his first serve. In his last four matches with Novak Djokovic, Roddick is 146-31 where first serve points are concerned (giving him a percentage of 82%). He has only been broken three times in these matches, with 43-3 in
service games.
The outcome of the second match will give rise to many different scenarios for the group, while all of these will also be dependent on the first match played. There is the possibility of a three-way 2-1 tie if Tomas Berdych and Novak Djokovic win their matches,
and also if Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick emerge victorious. The result will be much clearer after the first match of the day is played later today.
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