Saturday, November 12, 2011
Qualifying
PARIS (AP) -Tomas Berdych, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Mardy Fish filled out the last qualifying berths for the eight-man ATP World Tour Finals on Thursday. All three earned their spots for the elite London tournament after Berdych beat Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia 7-5, 6-4 in the third round of the Paris Masters. Tipsarevic needed to win the title in Paris to qualify for the season-ending event, which starts on Nov. 20. Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and David Ferrer had already qualified. "It's just amazing," Berdych said of qualifying for the tour finals for the second year in a row. "I had a great season last year with the final of Wimbledon and semifinal in Paris and other results ... but now I'm sitting in the position that I made it again." Tsonga knew he had secured qualification before even stepping on court to defeat Andreas Seppi of Italy 6-3, 6-4. "That helped me to be more relaxed when I started the match," Tsonga said. "I'm just really happy to go there. At the beginning of the year I didn't play really well and I didn't expect to be there at the end of the season." Tsonga's win over Federer in the Wimbledon quarterfinals before losing in the next round to Djokovic, the eventual champion, gave him confidence after an average start to the season. "When I was playing well at Wimbledon, I believed already I could make it because I knew I would get back to an acceptable ranking," Tsonga said. Fish was forced to retire at the Paris Masters while leading 6-1, 6-7 (6), 2-1 against Juan Monaco of Argentina because of a hamstring injury, but he still plans to go to London. "There's no doubt about that, even if it's torn, I'm still going to play and still try to play," said Fish, who is enjoying his best season after breaking into the top 10 in the rankings for the first time. "The next two weeks are arguably the most important of my whole career. I'd just love to be close to 100 percent at the end of the year. We'll do everything we can to get there. I'll ice it five, six times a day; electric stimulate it, ultrasound, all that stuff." Federer wasn't surprised by the look of the field. "For me, that was somewhat logical after the (U.S.) Open that that was going to be the eight," Federer said. "Anything else would have surprised me. They have had the best season so far, all these players, and I think it's going to be an exciting world tour finals."