The Cincinnati Masters has been a tournament to savor and an event to remember for all the right reasons. There were some notable absentees, including newly-crowned Wimbledon champion Roger Federer, three-time Grand Slam winner Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, and Kei Nishikori, but some rising ATP talents really took advantage of the opportunity that stood in front of them.
The first of the two Cincinnati finalists is Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov. He came through some serious challenges to make his first ever Masters final by beating Feliciano Lopez in the opening round, 2009 US Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro in the second round, before overcoming Yuichi Sugita and John Isner in the next two rounds. Dimitrov’s hard work and output in the past week will be reflected in the ATP rankings as he reenters the ATP Top 10 on Monday and puts himself in contention for qualification for the World Tour Finals in London in November.
That’s what every player is working towards outside the Grand Slams. Qualifying for the World Tour Finals is substantial and definitive evidence that a player had an extremely successful season and was one of the eight best players on the planet for that particular season. Dimitrov has had his wobbles and his inconsistencies, but this week in Cincinnati has put him on the straight and narrow and closer to the tennis he was showing in the Australian Open at the beginning of the year.
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His opponent in the Cincinnati final is the flamboyant, controversial bad boy of tennis Nick Kyrgios. His road to the final has not come easy. He had suffered incredibly with a recurring hip problem that curtailed a lot of his season, so this week has come out of the blue. The most pleasing thing for the Australian is that he is capitalizing on a weakened draw at a higher level of the sport. A Masters 1000 final is an incredible achievement and in many respects it will feel like a Grand Slam final for both Kyrgios and Dimitrov. Neither have ever experienced a final at Masters 1000 level and both are looking to be the rare non-Big-Four winner of a Masters title. Before the Italian Open this year, 54 of the last 57 Masters 1000 events had been won by a member of the elite foursome of Murray, Federer, Nadal or Djokovic. The Italian Open saw Alexander Zverev break that stranglehold on the Masters events and opened the door for other players to step up to the plate and gain some momentum following in the footsteps of the German.
This showpiece final is a serious breath of fresh air. It will be compelling and fascinating to see which player applies themselves to the occasion the better of the two. This could well be the first step of many in Masters 1000 finals for both players. Maybe tasting victory at this level could ignite the fire inside Kyrgios to make a serious jump at the Grand Slam events. Maybe this is the incentive that he truly needed to save his tennis career to a certain extent.
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I think Kyrgios will just edge as favourite in this encounter. His win over Rafael Nadal was a special one for the Australian and it would have been an emotionally draining victory, but he put that all to one side and beat David Ferrer the following day. Kyrgios’ track record is good on the bigger stages. It is the lack of consistency over a week-to-week basis that many have questioned. If he does go on to win Cincinnati, that could really be the first stepping stone to something really special in the career of Nick Kyrgios.
Prediction: Kyrgios in three sets
