Events / Editor / 09 April 2007 /

Who will be the Master?
The Davis Cup has been and gone until September and this week marks the start of the short, but exacting clay-court season.
The ATP tournaments in Valencia and Houston are the prelude this week for the third event of the Masters Series, as the top players head for Monte Carlo next week.

The back-to-back hard court tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami got this eighth year of Masters tennis up-and-running and now the players troop to the south of France for the first of three consecutive European legs on clay, with Rome and Hamburg in early May to follow.

The nine-tournament circuit will then switch back to North America for the August tournaments in Montreal and Cincinnati's hard courts, before heading back to Europe in October for the last two legs indoors on carpet in Madrid and Paris.

After the Paris Masters, we will then know the identities of the eight players who will make up the line-up for the year-ending Masters Cup on indoor hard courts in Shanghai, starting December 11.

The eight players will be split into two groups and play round-robin matches with the top two in each group going through to the semi-finals.
Not surprisingly, Swiss ace Roger Federer has dominated the last four years of the Masters Cup, winning three times and losing to David Nalbandian in the 2005 final.

Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten - who is struggling to get back up the rankings after major hip problems - was the first Masters Cup winner in 2000 in Lisbon as the ATP World Championship reinvented itself as the Masters Cup.

Pete Sampras had won five on the 10 World Championship finals with Boris Becker winning two with one apiece for Alex Corretja, Michael Stich and Andre Agassi, who won the first in 1990.

Kuerten's initial Masters Cup triumph was followed by Australian Lleyton Hewitt, who won in 2001 in Sydney and 2002 in the Cup's first visit to Shanghai.

Two finals in Houston - both won by Federer in 2003 and 2004 - followed before Shanghai has emerged as the regular venue for the Masters Cup.

Last December, Federer toppled James Blake in the final 6-0 6-3 6-4 but the American enjoyed his best season so far on the pro circuit. He had beaten Nalbandian in the semi-finals 6-4 6-1, while Federer beat Nadal 6-4 7-5 (Only the final of the Masters Cup is the best of five sets).

The finalists last year were Federer, Blake, Nadal, Nalbandian, Nikolay Davydenko, Ivan Ljubicic, Tommy Robredo and Andy Roddick.

But if Federer expects to reign supreme again he has work to do, especially after losing to comeback star Guillermo Canas at both Indian Wells and Miami. What a contrast to last year, when he won Indian Wells and Miami and was runner-up to Nadal in Monte Carlo to set a strong early pace on the road to Shanghai.

Nadal, of course, is king on clay. He missed the Davis Cup to recover from a foot injury and prepare for both Monte Carlo and the defence of his French Open title, when he also beat Federer in the 2006 final. This year he is going for his Roland Garros hat-trick.
The Spaniard already has points in the bag on the Masters circuit with his comfortable win over Novak Djokovic in the Indian Wells final. But Djokovic got among the points too with his victory over Canas in the Miami final.

British number one Andy Murray is another who should not be forgotten. He may have lost to Djokovic in two semi-finals, but he is a strong early contender for one of those big-money eight places on offer by the end of the year.
Murray and Djokovic, both still only 19, will certainly be in the mix. But so will Canas, who has rocketed 114 places up the rankings to world number 29 since his return to action following his drugs ban.

In reaching the final of the Miami event, Canas came through two rounds of qualifying to beat five seeded players in a row, including his quarter-final win over Federer to go with his second-round victory against him in Indian Wells.
Only two players - Nadal and Murray - beat Federer last year. In the space of a fortnight Canas did it twice!
April and May are the months when Nadal expects to be Master. He has won in Monte Carlo and Italy for the last two years and would love to make it a double hat-trick.

This week some but not all the top contenders will prepare for Monte Carlo by tackling the Valencia or Houston tournaments, but not Nadal or Federer.
Juan Carlos Ferrero, who won the Monte Carlo event in 2002 and 2003 and was runner-up to Hewitt in the 2002 Masters Cup, is one to watch this week as he fine-tunes his game.

He is second seed behind fellow Spaniard David Ferrer and is looking to recapture the Valencia title he won in 2003. Last year the title went to another Spaniard, Nicolas Almagro, who battled through from the qualifying to claim his first ATP triumph at the V Open de Tenis in Valencia.

The 21-year-old world number 31 is third seed behind favourite Ferrer. Betfair punters see Juan Carlos Ferrero as the 2.9 favourite to win in Spain, while Ferrer is trading at 3.4.

Over in Houston, Andy Roddick will be eager to get in the groove for Monte Carlo at the US Men's Clay Court Championships.
Big pal Mardy Fish is the defending champion but Roddick will want to recapture the title he held in 2001, 2002 and 2005 to put him in the mood for Monte Carlo. Blake and Tommy Haas, who beat Roddick in the quarters in Houston last year, will be the main dangers.

Roddick will head for Monte Carlo knowing he needs to play catch-up on the early pacemakers in the Masters Series. But the slow clay will certainly be to Nadal's liking.
Roddick leads the way in the betting for the US event at 3.8, while Tommy Haas available to back at 4.2.

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