“I'm not thinking about it,” says Rafa Jódar these days every time he is asked about the ATP Finals. Him, doing his thing, game by game: a textbook response. But what lies ahead is so historic that it's hard not to really have it in your head. At 20 years old, he is one step away from becoming the first debutant to qualify for the old Masters Cup. Neither Novak Djokovic, nor Rafa Nadal, nor Roger Federer achieved it in their first season. As if not to be aware.
Juan Martín del Potro recently told ESPN that, at the end of 2018, after playing in the final of the US Open, he had made all the calculations to reach number one ahead of that Big Three. He knew which games he had to win, which ones he could afford to lose; In short, what mathematics dictated. A serious knee injury cut him off, but the anecdote confirms what tennis players usually deny: everyone is clear about how many points they have in the ATP ranking. And Jódar, even more so.
Currently, the Spaniard is eleventh in the Race to Turin, the classification that designates the best of the season. Only the top eight qualify for the tournament, so it seems far away, but it is not. Jannik Sinner has already confirmed that he will not play the rest of the year and Jódar can get closer to the qualification positions. If this Thursday, in the quarterfinals of the Shanghai Masters 1000, he beats Casper Ruud, he will be ahead of Novak Djokovic and could even overtake Alex de Minaur if he loses to Alexander Zverev. A title in China would allow him to overtake several of the players ahead of him, although he does not need to go that far to maintain his chances. Then there will be the ATP 500 in Basel and the Masters 1000 in Paris, the last opportunities to score points before Turin.
The problems of the rest
The physical uncertainty that surrounds some applicants also plays in their favor. De Minaur himself, one of his main rivals, withdrew from the Beijing final against Djokovic due to adductor discomfort that he still has. Ben Shelton, another of the candidates, arrived on the Asian tour with problems regaining form after his participation in the Davis Cup and ended up losing in Shanghai to Arthur Gea. It does not mean that any of them are going to miss Turin, but it does mean that the fight for the last places is open and that each tournament can alter the calculations.
If he reaches Turin, it will be the culmination of a unique, unprecedented climb. At the beginning of the year he was 165 in the world and since then he has only added milestones, such as his first ATP title in Marrakech, his Roland Garros quarterfinals or four Masters 1000s this season. If he reaches the Top 10 on this tour, in fact, he would break the historical precocity record of Boris Becker, who was the one who needed the least time to be among the top ten since his emergence into the elite. A record reserved for the chosen ones.
A new controversy
This Wednesday, in the round of 16 in Shanghai against Botic van de Zandschulp, Jódar once again remembered that he is one of them. The Dutchman, world number 41, arrived with victories against Alcaraz and Nadal on his record and took the first set 7-6 after saving two breaking points, but Jódar did not let up. In the second set, the Spaniard broke early, lost serve in the sixth game and still took the set 6-4. In the third he barely gave his rival any options and closed with a 6-2 after two and a half hours. It was the third consecutive comeback after losing the first set in the tournament, a sign of his character.
But the game also left a controversy about that character. After losing the first set and wasting a break point at the beginning of the second, Jódar demanded the towel from a ball boy in Spanish. He did it shouting: "Give me the fucking towel, damn it!" The chair umpire, the Ecuadorian Jimmy Pinoargote, gave him a warning and told him that he knew perfectly well what he had said. Jódar protested and assured that he had not said anything wrong. But the warning was already pointing. Nor was it the first time that his relationship with the ball boys focused the conversation. At Roland Garros in May, he was criticized for allegedly pushing a ball girl, although he claimed that she had tripped while moving away.
