ATP Finals 2026 PREVIEW & 8 Essential Questions w/ Hugh Clarke | Monday Match Analysis

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Gill Gross (0:54)

Welcome everyone to Monday Match Analysis. I'm Gill Gross, and it is time for a preview of the 2026 ATP Year-End Championships in Turin, Italy. This one's a little bit different to preview. No quarters, no dark horses, no upset alerts. I like to have a guest on coming into the championships just so we can run through some of the storylines, talk about the eight players in the field. So on this week's episode, I brought on one of my favorite guests, always Hugh Clarke of the great newsletter Thread of Order, who does outstanding tactical breakdowns in a very similar format as myself. Usually he does a deep dive on the finals, the men's finals every week. So it was great to talk to Hugh once again. We run through every player in the field. At the end, we talk about some of the players who just missed. In terms of my actual prediction of what is going to happen, I will come back to talk to you one-on-one after my conversation with you, with my official predictions. But first, here it is, myself and Hugh Clarke.

Really looking forward to just running through these eight guys that we have in the field coming into the year-end championships here in 2026 And I want to start with the guy who just snuck in miraculously, because after he lost in his opener in Paris, it really didn't look likely that he would end up in the field directly. I'm of course talking about Rafael Jodar, who hadn't played a single tour level match coming into the year, objectively the fastest, most meteoric rise into the top 10 that we've ever seen.

We've both talked a lot, you and I, in our coverage about his return.

I want to highlight something other than the return. What should we be talking about other than Jodar's returning that has enabled so much winning for the teenage Spaniard?

Hugh Clarke (2:57)

I mean, I've spoken about also how well he steps in on his backhand. He plays downhill, very Medvedev-like, but with a more aggressive appetite, I think, on that backhand.

I think he's in Zverev's draw, so it's going to be interesting to see how he jumps on the second serve there. Also his forehand is very heavy. It's a high RPM forehand. I find he has a very good job breaking the cross-court sideline. I'm not sure he's so good hitting it down the line, but I find he's very good at pulling guys a long way off the court, cross-court.

There's a lot of things he does pretty well already. He moves quite well for his size. He obviously returns very aggressively in a kind of uniquely aggressive way. I think the serve has gotten better this year, although that's still his weak point in terms of accuracy and what that can do. And as you pointed out, his transition game has room for growth as well. But I've always been impressed with how well he can break the sideline and stretch guys in that forehand cross-court exchange.

Gill Gross (4:00)

Yeah, that's a good one. I've noticed that he loves going cross, does not play a lot down the line. That's something that I think his players get to know him more and start feeling the need to think more about how they're playing him. I'm curious to see if more guys start to cheat that way so that they cover it a little bit better. Definitely something to watch out for. But I've also enjoyed that analysis on how well he gets downhill. It's part of the reason why I want to see him become more willing to actually continue that forward movement. What I'll point out on court side advantage is his at-net frequency is 11 percent. So that's two percentage points below the tour average. But his win percentage when he comes to the net is 71 percent, which clears the tour average pretty significantly, which is 67 percent. So wins a lot when he comes forward, doesn't come forward probably as much as he could. To me that puts him in a good place.