Czech No. 9 seed Tomas Berdych dismissed Juan Martin del Potro 6-1, 6-4 in the final on Sunday at Tokyo to capture his fourth ATP title and first on hard court.
Having started the week at No. 29 in the ATP 2008 Race, Berdych has an outside chance of qualifying for Tennis Masters Cup Shanghai for the first time; he is 133 points behind No. 8 James Blake.
Del Potro, meanwhile, will rise to No. 9 both in the Race and the South African Airways ATP Rankings – a new career-high – on the strength of his performance in Tokyo. He is the second Argentine to rank inside the elite Top 10, behind No. 7 David Nalbandian.
Berdych, who is currently ranked No. 27, is a former Top 10 player, peaking at No. 9 on August 20, 2007.
In a dominant display by the top Czech player, Berdych fired 11 aces, converted three of eight break points and defended all three against him in the 1 hr., 17 min., encounter. In the first set, he surrendered just four points on serve.
In the semifinals, Berdych came back from the brink of defeat against No. 2 seed Andy Roddick, who led 5-2 in the third set and served for the match at 5-3 before Berdych fought back to claim victory. Other seeded players to fall victim to the right-hander this week are No. 9 Tommy Robredo and No. 3 Fernando Gonzalez.
The 23-year-old Berdych, who has now won 13 of his past 16 matches against Argentine opponents, was contesting his second ATP final of the season after finishing runner-up to Tommy Robredo in Bastad in July. The title is his first since 2007 Halle (d. Baghdatis) and his fourth overall as he takes his lifetime record in ATP finals to 4-4. His only previous hard court final came at 2006 Mumbai, when he lost out to Dmitry Tursunov.
The Monte-Carlo resident has now compiled a 32-19 season match record (22-11 on hard court), which includes reaching the semifinals at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami (l. to Nadal) and last week in Bangkok (l. to Djokovic).
The 20-year-old del Potro was bidding to become the first player to win his first five ATP finals in his career since Dutchman Sjeng Schalken, who won his five from 1995-97, ‘99 and 2000. Del Potro now has a 4-1 record in ATP singles finals and is second among ATP title leaders this year – behind only ATP World No. 1 Rafael Nadal, who has won eight titles from 10 finals.
The Tandil resident captured his maiden ATP title at Stuttgart (d. Gasquet), then followed it with consecutive wins in Kitzbuhel (d. Melzer), Los Angeles (d. Roddick) and Washington (d. Troicki) before reaching his first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the US Open (l. to Murray). The Tokyo defeat is just his second loss in his past 31 matches. He drops to a 38-10 record on the season.
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