Rafa Nadal has regained the no.1 ranking after reaching the
finals of Beijing Open. Several factors indicate this would be a long reign at
no.1.
Rafa’s currently has a healthy lead of about 2700 points over
Djokovic in the year to date ATP rankings. Rafa has 0 points to defend till the
Australian Open next year. In the same period, Djokovic defends around 4500 ATP
points. This should give Rafa a healthy lead over Novak by beginning next year.
Also, Rafa’s form at
hard courts has been almost impeccable this year (27-1), and he is playing the
most aggressive hard court tennis of his career. He has played much closer to
the baseline and dominated and bulldozed opponents with his rocket forehand. He
has victories over Federer and Djokovic in fast hard courts of Cincinati and
the U S Open respectively.
All these point towards a good season end performance by
Rafa in the remaining 2 Masters at Shanghai and Paris, and at the World Tour
Finals in London.
Also, Rafa’s clay court dominance over the years would help
him defend the points won over the clay season in 2014. Also, he has no points
to defend at Wimbledon. All this would mean Rafa would hang on to the no. 1
raking at least till August next year. Then the biggest challenges would start
for Rafa when he would have to defend big points over the US Open 2014 series.
It would thus be safe to say that tennis world would see
Rafa at the top for a long period now, with Djokovic and others playing catch
up for much of the coming 12 months.
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