This week’s Swiss Indoors Basel and the Erste Bank Open — both ATP 500 tournaments — provide big opportunities for players who are trying to move their country into one of the ATP Cup’s final five qualifying spots with the event’s second entry deadline looming on 13 November, just more than three weeks away.

The winner of each event will receive 500 ATP Ranking points, meaning countries currently placed from 20-24 could solidify their standing in Basel or Vienna, while countries on the outside looking in can surge forward with a big effort by their No. 1 player.

Leading the way in trying to qualify his country is 2017 Nitto ATP Finals champion Grigor Dimitrov. The Bulgarian fell to No. 78 in the ATP Rankings in August, his lowest standing since May 2012, when he was only 21. At that point, Bulgaria’s hopes of participating in the ATP Cup looked in jeopardy.

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But with his run to the semi-finals of the US Open, Dimitrov not only helped his own ATP Ranking, but he put Bulgaria, currently in 20th spot, in position to earn a right to challenge itself against the world’s top teams in Australia. Dimitrov can push Bulgaria even closer to qualification with a deep run in Vienna, where he will face Bosnia & Herzegovina’s Damir Dzumhur in the first round.

But the big battle that is setting up is for the 24th and final spot. Moldovan No. 1 Radu Albot currently has his country in 24th place. The World No. 49 has 1,057 points, putting him just 31 points in front of World No. 51 Alexander Bublik, who is trying to push Kazakhstan into the cut.

Bublik lost in the second round of qualifying in Vienna. But even still, he will have an opportunity to pass Albot in the ATP Rankings depending on the Moldovan’s results in Basel. One year ago this week, Albot won the Liuzhou Challenger, which netted him 80 points. Those points will drop next Monday.

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The 29-year-old will play Serbian Dusan Lajovic in the first round of the ATP 500 event in Basel, with a potential showdown against nine-time champion Roger Federer looming in the second round. Albot took the first set from Federer in Miami this year before succumbing in three sets. Another Kazakh, Mikhail Kukushkin, is 55 points behind Bublik in the ATP Rankings, and he will play Borna Coric in the first round in Vienna.

Between 20th-placed Bulgaria and 24th-placed Moldova are three countries with No. 1 players hoping to firm up their standing in this ATP Cup battle. Hubert Hurkacz has Poland in 21st, Cristian Garin has Chile in 22nd and Pablo Cuevas has Uruguay in 23rd.

Hurkacz will play second seed Karen Khachanov in Vienna, while Garin and Cuevas are both competing in Basel. Of the group, Hurkacz has the most points to defend, having earned 110 points by winning the Brest Challenger this week last year.

Countries on the outside looking in — No. 26 Norway and No. 27 Portugal — had their ATP Cup dreams take a hit as Norwegian No. 1 Casper Ruud and Portuguese No. 1 Joao Sousa both lost in Basel qualifying.

Romanian Marius Copil began playing tennis when he was seven, mostly because his brother would practise daily in their hometown of Arad. But Copil didn’t enjoy the sport at a young age, preferring football.

“[Tennis] was a one-on-one sport. At the beginning that’s what I didn’t like, because my father was a rugby player and my mom was a handball player, so they both did a team sport,” Copil said. “Back when I went home finishing my homework and so on I was allowed to go on the streets to play with the kids and we were all playing soccer. That’s why I liked soccer more than tennis. It was much more fun.”

Copil was not the most willing participant on a tennis court. He didn’t even want to hit every shot. There were no bubbles in Arad, so kids had to go to schools during the winter and play on wooden courts meant for basketball and volleyball that had some lines thrown down for tennis. There were only two feet behind the ‘baselines’, so players had to stay inside the court to play.

“I told them, ‘Listen, if you want me to stay here I just want to smash and serve,’” recalls Copil, who later spent most of his teenage years in Germany. “So for two years I was just smashing and serving.”

That’s fitting, as Copil has become one of the most dangerous servers on the ATP Tour. The Romanian’s 75 per cent success rate behind his first serve places him among the Top 50 since the statistic has been kept.

“What a nice serve he has,” said Roger Federer. “Nice, cool demeanor on the court as well.”

“He serves extremely well,” said Andy Murray.

That is the respect that Copil, who has climbed as high as World No. 56 and reached two ATP Tour finals, receives from his peers. But it hasn’t always been easy for him. Copil first cracked the ATP Rankings just more than 13 years ago, when he was only 15, and it would take more than a decade for him to make the Top 100.

“My father said, ‘Okay, we don’t play any juniors anymore, we go straight to ATP.’ I think that was a bad call because in the juniors you have these long matches. You have rivalries when you play good. You have the best kids from all the countries so you have good matches… Being at the Challenger level so young, it’s tough because the guys were much stronger than me, they knew the game better and I was losing matches, so it was tough to grow my game and get confidence,” Copil said. “At 22, [in 2013], I reached No. 124 and then I started thinking that I was already in the Top 100. I was thinking too far ahead and I said, ‘Okay, I already made it.’ I was not thinking well and I dropped. It was tough because then people started to judge me and I was listening a lot to everybody. My confidence went down and I wanted to stop at some point.”

Copil struggled with the pressure both he and others placed on himself, and it inhibited his progress. But the Romanian never gave up, and at the 2017 Mutua Madrid Open, he finally made his breakthrough into the Top 100, nearly 11 years after first cracking the ATP Rankings. He defeated Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 7-6(6), 4-6, 7-6(9), overcoming a 0/3 deficit and saving two match points in the third-set tie-break.

“I looked at my coach and was like, ‘I cannot make it. I’m so close and I was close before to get to Top 100. I don’t know if I can make it.’ I was so tight. He told me just to relax and play, whatever happens happens,” Copil said. “I was a little bit lucky there with some great shots and then the net helped me on the match point. I just put the ball in and I was praying, ‘Please miss!’… I felt 20 kilograms lighter, all the pressure off my shoulders,” Copil said. “I don’t want to know what would’ve happened if I didn’t win that tie-break, so it’s good that I won it. I think us as players, we put too much pressure on ourselves with the Top 100. It’s a goal that you want to reach and then when you’re close, you start to overthink too much.”

Copil’s biggest breakthrough came last season, when he made his first two ATP Tour finals. At the ATP 250 in Sofia, he fell in a deciding set against first-time champion Mirza Basic. But even more impressively, he defeated two Top 10 opponents — Marin Cilic and Alexander Zverev — to make the Swiss Indoors Basel championship match as a qualifier.

Standing in the way was Federer, who at that point had already won eight titles at his hometown event. Copil acquitted himself well, leading the Swiss superstar by a break in each set, but ultimately losing in straight sets.

“He did very well. He came out and I think he played nice tennis,” Federer said. “He played great. That’s what I told him as well. He’s won more matches than I did this week, so he’s the champ really of this Basel week.”

Copil proved not just to the rest of the Tour, but to himself, that he is capable of competing against the best players in the world. And it’s that self-belief that the Romanian has been working on.

“I just said to myself I need to go on court, go to enjoy and play free. I didn’t play the result, I was just playing free and that was nice. If I could do that each tournament, it would be a dream. I’m working on it,” said Copil. “I don’t think about [what my game is capable of] too much, and that’s the problem… I have to start believing in myself much more. With my serve, I could do damage.”

Copil has been working with former Romanian star Andrei Pavel since Cincinnati last year, with the exception of a two-month hiatus after Rotterdam in February.

“I think he definitely has Top 20 game. He actually proved it at the end of the last year in Switzerland beating two Top 10 guys,” Pavel said. “I’m trying to help him with my experience and getting the confidence and experience to work hard and to trust in his game.”

Many times, a player’s personality is reflected in their game. But while Copil has a massive serve and uses aggressive tactics, he is mellow off the court, and admits to being shy.

“He’s a great person, that stands out for sure,” Pavel said of his charge.

But Copil is not shy of the spotlight on the court. He enjoys competing against the sport’s best on some of tennis’ biggest stages. In fact, Copil embraces that. And one year after his biggest run yet in Basel, he still dreams of glory.

“My dream is to win at least one ATP title,” Copil said, cracking a smile. “To win one would be nice.”

No. 15, Stan Wawrinka, +2, 1,820 Points
The 16-time tour-level titlist advanced to his second indoor final of the year at the European Open in Antwerp. Wawrinka defeated Feliciano Lopez and Gilles Simon in three sets, before ending the run of Jannik Sinner in the semi-finals. Despite his three-set loss to former World No. 1 Andy Murray in the championship match, the 34-year-old jumps two spots to No. 15 in the ATP Race To London. Read Final Report.

Leading ATP Race To London Contenders

No. 7, Alexander Zverev, 2,855 points
The reigning Nitto ATP Finals champion can confirm his spot in London this week if he lifts the Swiss Indoors Basel trophy and other results go his way. Zverev enters the ATP 500 event in form, after reaching his first ATP Masters 1000 final of the year at the Rolex Shanghai Masters (l. to Medvedev). The 22-year-old reached the semi-finals in Basel last year, before falling to Romania’s Marius Copil in three sets.

No. 8, Matteo Berrettini, 2,525 points
The Italian will attempt to strengthen his position in the Race with a strong debut appearance at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna. Sitting in the eighth and final qualification spot for The O2, Berrettini leads ninth-placed Roberto Bautista Agut by just 40 points. The US Open semi-finalist also arrives in Europe after an impressive run in Shanghai, where he reached his first ATP Masters 1000 semi-final (l. to Zverev).

Read Vienna Draw Preview

No. 9, Roberto Bautista Agut, 2,485 points
Bautista Agut will be hoping to re-enter the qualification positions with a deep run in Basel. Competing for the first time since losing to fellow contender Berrettini in Shanghai, the Spaniard will face last year’s runner-up Copil in Switzerland. Bautista Agut has reached the Basel quarter-finals in each of the past two editions of the ATP 500 tournament.

No. 10, David Goffin, 2,325 points
In the same quarter of the draw as Bautista Agut in Basel, David Goffin also faces a tricky opener this week as he looks to close the 200-point gap to eighth-placed Berrettini. The Belgian will meet 2016 champion Marin Cilic for a spot in the second round. Goffin and Cilic are tied at 3-3 in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series, but Cilic has won each of their three most recent encounters without dropping a set.

Read Basel Draw Preview

No. 11, Fabio Fognini, 2,235 points
A further 90 points behind Goffin is Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters winner Fognini. The 32-year-old arrives in Basel after falling to Janko Tisparevic in his opening match at the Intrum Stockholm Open last week. The fifth seed, who shares the second quarter of the draw with Stefanos Tsitsipas, opens his Basel campaign against Next Gen ATP Finals contender Alexei Popyrin.

A LOOK BACK
Las Vegas Tennis Open (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA): In January, Vasek Pospisil was laying on an operating table. The Canadian had undergone back surgery to repair a herniated disc and would miss the next five months, before returning at Wimbledon.

On Sunday, Pospisil found his way back to the winners’ circle. The 29-year-old claimed his eighth ATP Challenger Tour title and first in nearly two years, prevailing on the hard courts of Las Vegas. He defeated Aussie James Duckworth 7-5, 6-7(11), 6-3 in two hours and 26 minutes.

“He’s a great competitor and it was just a really good match,” said Pospisil. “It had some ups and downs and drama, which is expected in a final. I’m just happy I got through it. I wasn’t serving as well as I would have liked to. The difference was that I started to be a little more aggressive. It was a very competitive match. From my end, it was about doing well on second serve returns and applying a bit of pressure.”

Duckworth did well to deny five match points in the second set tie-break, but it was Pospisil who eventually converted his sixth. He completed an impressive week that saw him not drop a set en route to the final, also defeating Michael Mmoh, Peter Polansky, Mitchell Krueger, Taro Daniel and a red-hot Christopher O’Connell.

It has been an impressive comeback campaign for the Canadian, who is just 10 days removed from a Round of 16 appearance at the Rolex Shanghai Masters as a qualifier. There, he earned his second Top 20 win in recent weeks, upsetting Diego Schwartzman after toppling Karen Khachanov at the US Open.

“I still I have a lot of work to do. Tennis is all about ups and downs like anything else in life. For the moment I’m enjoying the wave I’m on and we’ll see where it takes me.”

The former World No. 25 will rise to No. 168 in the ATP Rankings.

International Men’s Challenger (Ningbo, China): Yasutaka Uchiyama is saving his best tennis for the final months of the season. The Japanese No. 3 turned in a masterclass on Sunday in Ningbo, needing 71 minutes to dismiss Steven Diez 6-1, 6-3 for the championship. Uchiyama dropped one set all week to secure his fifth Challenger title.

“It was tough, especially at the beginning of the match,” said Uchiyama. “I wasn’t serving well, but after 3-1 in the first set I started to get my rhythm. And at the end of the match, it wasn’t easy to close it out but I’m happy to win in two sets.”

At the age of 27, the victory moves Uchiyama into the Top 100 of the ATP Rankings for the first time. He is in the midst of a dominant run of form in recent weeks, also lifting the Challenger trophy in nearby Shanghai and streaking to the quarter-finals at his hometown ATP Tour event in Tokyo. It will all culminate in a career-high position of No. 87 on Monday.

Wolffkran Open (Ismaning, Germany): On the lightning-fast carpet courts of Ismaning, it was Lukas Lacko who sprinted into the winners’ circle on Sunday. The Slovakian defeated Maxime Cressy 6-3, 6-0 in just 50 minutes to lift the trophy.

Lacko, who saved three match points in Saturday’s semi-final victory over Julian Lenz, proceeded to lift his 13th Challenger trophy and first of the year. The former World No. 44 is pushing towards a Top 100 return at the age of 31. He rises to No. 192 in the ATP Rankings with the triumph.

Photo: Juergen Hasenkopf

A LOOK AHEAD
It’s the final week of the ATP Race To Milan and Ugo Humbert is on the brink of qualifying for the Next Gen ATP Finals. Sitting in eighth position, he enters Brest, France as the top seed. Roberto Carballes Baena, Thomas Fabbiano and Corentin Moutet are also competing at the Challenger 100 event.

In Traralgon, Australia, Uchiyama looks to secure titles in back-to-back weeks. The first of a two-week Aussie swing also features home hopes James Duckworth, Marc Polmans, Alex Bolt and Andrew Harris.

Hamburg debuts with Salvatore Caruso and Elias Ymer leading the indoor hard court event. And the Chinese swing moves to Liuzhou, where Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina are the top seeds.

Meanwhile, in Lima, Peru, native son Juan Pablo Varillas returns home to a hero’s welcome after securing his country’s first Challenger title in 11 years. The Lima Challenger is the first of three clay-court tournaments in South America, to be followed by Guayaquil, Ecuador and Montevideo, Uruguay.

Most ATP Tour players wouldn’t look back fondly on a first-round exit, but Stefanos Tsitsipas believes his opening-round defeat at this year’s US Open was a blessing in disguise.

”It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” Tsitsipas said ahead of the Swiss Indoors Basel, where he is seeded third. “I stayed in New York for six or seven days after and it gave me time to discover new things. It was important for me to enjoy and realise what I needed in my life.

”It was my decision to live life how I wanted to, not how others wanted me to. There was a time last summer when I doubted myself, [thought] that I wasn’t interesting as a person. I wanted to be someone else, but now I understand that it’s awesome to be myself.”

Since New York, the #NextGenATP Greek has succeeded with his unique brand of tennis. He finished runner-up in Beijing (l. to Thiem) and scored a win over World No. 1 Novak Djokovic en route to a semi-final showing at the Rolex Shanghai Masters. The pair of results helped clinch his maiden appearance at the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals, held from 10-17 November at The O2 in London.

Tsitsipas also credited his recent form with a different approach to his tennis. In keeping with the need to be himself, he decided to accept his limitations and play to his strengths. A player with as much variety as Tsitsipas can sometimes have difficulty selecting what shot to hit, so the Greek opted to keep things simple on the practice court and in matches.

“I practise more efficiently. I focus on things that may work not in the long term, but [will] in the short term. I know where I should push more,” Tsitsipas said. “Before, I was always seeking more and didn’t really understand what my orientations were. That would make me crazy, even during matches, and I’d have outbursts.

“I took things way too seriously and thought that was how I got the titles, whatever I was pushing towards. I was pushing way too much and sometimes I have to enjoy it. I can’t win every single week.”

But Tsitsipas isn’t just making changes on the court. Once an avid social media user, he let his manager handle his personal accounts and deleted all of his social media apps (except for Gidget and WhatsApp). He believes the decision sparked more authentic interactions in his life and allowed him to relax away from the court.

“I’m not checking Instagram on my phone for 30 or 40 minutes like I used to. It was really stressful and drove me crazy a little bit,” Tsitsipas said. “I feel a difference in my behavior and how I feel. I can connect with people better. Being away from social media and spending more quality time is one of the best things that’s happened to me.”

After a challenging four-month stretch this season that saw Tsitsipas endure six opening-round exits, he has emerged as a stronger player. Although the Greek would love to clinch his first ATP 500 title in Basel, the end result won’t deter his belief that he’s moving in the right direction.

“I’m currently in the best state of my life,” Tsitsipas said. “It doesn’t have to do with results or playing good tennis or bad tennis. I’ve been feeling very happy and very well. I’ve been enjoying life more in general and that reflects in my game. It makes me happy and makes me want to live better.”