Intrigue all round as top eight play the numbers game

Roger Federer said it could drive you crazy and Andy Roddick thought it offered “false hope”. One thing is for sure is that the round-robin format at the ATP World Tour Finals provides plenty of intrigue.

With nearly half the 15 matches already completed none of the eight players is guaranteed a semi-final berth and none of them are booking their flights home—a stark contrast to the normal “do or die” nature of their business on the circuit.
Roddick, well-drilled in the arithmetic needed at the elite season-ender having reached the semi-finals in 2003, 2004 and 2007, knew defeat by Tomas Berdych had taken his fate out of his hands on Wednesday and victory for Novak Djokovic over Rafael Nadal later would end his hopes of surviving Group A.

However, for a while, he could still cling to the hope of surviving for the weekend at the spectactular O2 Arena.

“I mean, this tournsment is obviously different,” teh 28-year-old told reporters after his 7-5 6-3 defeat. “It’s the only round-robin we play in any year.

“Obviously being conscious of something inside of a match other than a win or a loss is a little bit different. I think it makes this tournament unique. I think it’s fun for the fans to look at the little draw boards.

“I think that’s the way to do an end-of-the-year event. I think it makes it unique. There’s always a chance of something. So it gives us hope, even if it’s false hope sometimes.”

Journalists are often seen with puzzled frowns at the event as they try and work out the various scenarios, no more so than last year when Federer, Andy Murray and Juan Martin del Potro finished with virtually identical records in their group and Murray was eliminated by one game despite two match wins.

“BIT CRAZY”

On that occasion Del Potro, missing this year because of a long-term injury, was farcically left standing around on court after beating Federer not knowing whether he was through.

“I think last year was the most extreme situation I’ve ever had to go through, feeling like I needed a set maybe plus a few games,” Federer said after his defeat of Murray on Tuesday gave him a 100 percent but failed to guarantee a semi-final spot.

“You can go a bit crazy about it, no doubt about that. Last year it was working my mind a lot. You try to block everything out but sometimes that’s just impossible. It’s complicated when things are flying through the room like that.”

Federer, who is bidding for a record-equalling fifth title at the showpiece tournament, will reach the semi-finals as long as he wins one set against Sweden’s Robin Soderling on Thursday in a Group B that could well need calculators to decide.

At least Berdych seems pretty clear about what he needs to do, the Czech insisting that he will just be thinking about winning against Nadal on Friday, not games percentages.

“I’m still in kind of a chance to have it in my hands in the last match,” he told reporters as he looked ahead to a repeat of his Wimbledon final against Nadal on Friday.

“(The maths) I think that’s just the work of you guys, the media. You’re going to sit and be counting all the numbers, what’s going to happen if he wons five games, what happens if he won one set or something like that.

“We are tennis players. We want to win every match. We’re not going to be like Italian football players just waiting for a 0-0 and defending all the time.”