With a slight opportunity to close out the year in the No. 1 ranking, 17-time Grand Slam champion
Roger Federer is motivated to close out the season in formidable fashion.
Since his surprising semi-final exit at the US Open, Federer won titles in Shanghai, Basel, and played Paris. As one of the two players left on the tour who will take part in both the World Tour Finals and the Davis Cup Final, Federer is glad to have the nine-day break to prepare for a strong year-end finish.
“I can handle it quite easily, especially with nine days off,” said Federer. “In London, I have a minimum of three matches to play and up to five, it’s not a lot. And I do not have a particular injury or problem, I am confident.
“This is also something I look forward to, because I played a lot of tennis in recent months,” he added. “Those days I get, I spent with the family and on the practice court, where I decide when I play, not the tournament.”
While the chance to usurp the No. 1 ranking from Serbia’s Novak Djokovic is a slim one, Federer will look to produce his best tennis to better his chances of achieveing the top ranking at the start of the 2015 season.
“I always thought it was going to get solved in London,” Federer said in Paris. “Whether I am No. 1 at the end of this year, or one or two weeks later next year, it doesn’t really matter. Novak seems to be fit, anyway. Now I will have a good preparation for London. It’s not that I didn’t want to win here, but I knew it was going to be tough from the start.”
The Barclays ATP World Tour Finals takes place between Nov. 9-16 at The O2 Arena in London, England.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.
