Toronto Masters Draw Analysis

Greetings. I made a post recently but didn’t post it(yet). You probably know by now that Murray, Federer, and Nadal all withdrew from Toronto. Nadal said his wrist is not recovered yet while Murray and Federer withdrew because of the Olympics I think.

Murray and Federer both had deep runs in Wimbledon and probably felt with the Olympics in Rio that they had to skip Toronto. That is not so good for Murray who closed within 1090 points of Djokovic in the race.

Djokovic now has a chance to pick up a pretty easy 1000 points in Toronto and get back to winning ways after the early exit at Wimbledon. I’m surprised Murray is that close to Djokovic in the race given that Djokovic won the Australian Open, Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, made the finals of Rome, and won the French Open.

But of course losing in the third round of Wimbledon while Murray won the title wouldn’t have helped. The upside of that is that Djokovic got some more much-needed rest and is more ready for the four big events which lie ahead than the rest of the big four.

Rio is out of the way but at least there will be a week between Toronto and Rio and a week between Cincinnati and the US Open as usual. It’s a tough schedule and it will take some doing for Djokovic to win all four events but if anyone can it is him.

You would think he has a great shot at winning Toronto and he desperately wants to win all the other three events for different reasons. Rio because he is patriotic and hasn’t won the gold medal yet, Cincinnati to complete the career Masters, and the US Open to complete another three-slam year.

The US Open is probably the most important of the three but anyone of them would be a big deal.

As for the draw in Toronto, Djokovic still has a tough one with Wimbledon semi-finalist Berdych in his quarter and finalist Raonic in his half. The top seeds in the bottom half are Cilic(who parted ways with coach Ivanisevic after that enormous choke at Wimbledon), Nishikori, Thiem, and Stan.

I’m looking forward to some tennis again and there is now quite an exciting time ahead with the Olympics being part of the calendar this year. Should be an interesting time for tennis heads!