The New World No.1

Right its been quite a while since my last post on here but given the most recent big change in the men's game that has happened I thought I might aswell do a post about it and the change is of course that we have a new World No.1 player in the game and that player is Andy Murray. 

So here I'm going to take a look at how his year has gone so far (quickly!) and what are his prospects for defending his ranking coming up ahead as Andy will look to try and finish the year as No.1 as he prepares to play at the ATP World Tour Finals in London next week.

So let's take a quick look at his year so far.

ANDY'S 2016 SO FAR

January - Andy reaches his 5th Australian open final where he lost again to Novak Djokovic, this time in straight sets. 

February - Andy takes the month off as his wife, Kim has their baby, Sophia.

March - Andy returns to the tour and secures wins for Great Britain at the Davis cup against Japan to see them make it to the quarter final stages but he goes on to suffer two early surprise defeats at Indian Wells to Federico Delbonis and Grigor Dimitrov in Miami.

April - Andy begins to turn his year around as he reaches the semi finals of the Monte Carlo Masters and then the final in Madrid where he lost to Novak Djokovic in the final in three sets.

May - Andy wins the Italian Open Masters event in Rome by beating Djokovic in straight sets to secure his first win over Novak on clay.

June - Andy reaches the final of the French Open for the first time in his career but loses again to Djokovic in the final.  He would then go on to win a record 5th title at the Queens club in London.

July - Andy wins his 2nd Wimbledon title and 3rd grand slam overall at the All England Club.  Andy attends the Davis cup quarter final between Great Britain and Serbia but didn't play the event but the team went on to defeat Serbia to reach the semi finals. 

August - Andy defends his Olympic gold medal in Rio by defeating Juan Martin Del Potro in an epic four set final.

September - Andy loses to Kei Nishikori at the US Open quarter final stage and would then go on to play for Great Britain at the Davis cup where they were defeated by Argentina.

October - Andy makes a strong comeback to the tour and narrows the gap between himself and Novak in the rankings as he wins three titles in Beijing, Shanghai and Vienna, leaving Andy only 415 points behind to overtake Novak and become the new World No.1.

November - Andy overtakes Novak in the rankings to become the World No.1 for the first time in his career and wins the BNP Paribas Masters title in Paris, defeating John Isner in the final.

ATP WTF NEXT STOP AND NO.1 RANKING DEFENCE BEGINS

So this now finally brings us onto the season finale: the ATP world tour finals which begins this Sunday coming and it asks the big question?  Can Andy finish the year as the World No.1???  Well let's take a look....

As for the ATP WTF event itself, Andy has been given a pretty tough draw as the format of the event is a round robin where the players are split into two groups of four and Andy has been drawn with Stan Wawrinka, Marin Cilic and Kei Nishikori.  And all of these players have beaten Andy previously and Cilic and Nishikori especially have secured wins over Andy more recently although Andy has beaten Stan at the French Open.  So this is a tough section for him to deal with as the new World No.1.   

Novak Djokovic (now the World No.2) however has been given a kinder draw as he will face Gael Monfils, Dominic Thiem and Milos Raonic all of whom have never beaten Novak before.  But the one thing that may give Monfils, Thiem and Raonic encouragement is that Novak's form has been below par so far in the latter half of this season as he has suffered shock defeats to players such as Juan Martin Del Potro at the Olympics and just last week he lost his No.1 spot after being beaten by Marin Cilic in Paris, a player who had never previously beaten him.  So this may inspire more confidence in his opponents that they can finally claim a win against him.

So how might the ATP World Tour Finals pan out for Andy???  Well this is a tough question to answer because if you actually look at Andy's most recent wins he's rarely played any players inside the top 10 and his most highly ranked player he had beaten during his hot winning streak in the latter half of the season has been Milos Raonic in Cincinnati, who was ranked No.6 in the world at that time. 

So that means during this whole time Andy has never had to play a player ranked inside the Top 5 in the world but at the o2 in London he won't have the same luxury and he will be up against two major champions in his own section alone with Cilic and Wawrinka both US Open champions.  And this could mean that Andy would suffer a real blow if he were to be beaten at the hands of either of these players and he could lose his No.1 ranking as a result if he doesn't reach the final.

However right now, Andy is the best player in the world and if he can maintain the very high standards he has over the last four tournaments then there is probably no reason that he can't go on to win his first year end championship title in London and secure the No.1 ranking.  But in order for Andy to do so he will need to maintain that level as at the o2 in London he has only made the semi finals there twice in the last six years and he has said himself he wants to put in a better effort this year.

So can Andy win the ATP World Tour Finals and defend his No.1 ranking???  Well its hard to say at this stage he will definitely do it but given his recent form I think it is a fair possibility that he will go on to do so and if he does well he will certainly be the man to beat going into 2017.

And right now Andy has proven himself to be not only the World No.1 in tennis but also one of the greatest British sportsmen of all time and if he can go on to win more majors next year and keep his ranking then he is sure to go down as one of the true greats in the game and right now for my money, he pretty much already is.    

Right, so that's it for now and I will be back again soon on here with another post after the ATP World Tour Finals is over and give my thoughts on how it went and we'll see if Andy was able to defend his new No.1 spot.

So until the next one its bye for now!