It could be a significant week in the Emirates ATP Race To London, with 1,000 points on the line at the Shanghai Rolex Masters.
Four places remain up for grabs in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals singles field after Milos Raonic became the fourth player to qualify on Sunday, joining Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka.
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#NextGen star Nick Kyrgios’ victory last week at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2016 – the biggest title of his career - has seen him surge into contention for the place at The O2. The 21-year-old Australian moved up into 12th position and victory in Shanghai could see him break into the top eight positions.
Gael Monfils and Rafael Nadal are both looking to boost their bids of qualifying, currently sixth and seventh in the race respectively. Monfils, who fell to Kyrgios in the Tokyo semi-finals last week, is looking to punch his ticket to London for the first time. He'll try to strengthen his bid by reaching the Shanghai quarter-finals, which would be a career-best showing for the Frenchman.
View Emirates ATP Race To London Standings
Nadal, meanwhile, is looking to bounce back from a quarter-final loss to Grigor Dimitrov in Beijing last week. The Spaniard, who was forced to miss a crucial period earlier in the season, including Wimbledon, due to a wrist injury, is working hard to catch up. He is seeded fourth in Shanghai and looking to reach the final for the first time since 2009 (l. to Davydenko).
Dominic Thiem (illness) and Kei Nishikori (injury) will both miss the eighth ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament of the season, giving members of the chasing pack the chance to make up ground.
Tomas Berdych, Marin Cilic and David Goffin are all closing in on eighth-placed Thiem, who is looking to qualify for the season finale for the first time and will pick up his campaign on home soil at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna in two weeks.
Berdych, seeded seventh in Shanghai, is fewer than 400 points behind the Austrian. The Czech, who has made a successful return from the appendicitis that forced him out of the US Open, winning his first title of the season in Shenzhen, is looking to qualify for the year-end championships for the seventh year in a row.
Cilic and Goffin are further adrift, but both within 800 points of Thiem and deep runs in Shanghai would see them put pressure on the Austrian going into the final stretch of the season in Europe.