Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's Paris Masters win on Sunday made it six Europeans into the season-closing Masters Cup in Shanghai with Andy Roddick and Juan Martin Del Potro the only exceptions in the elite eight-man field.
Tsonga gatecrashed his way into the showdown in China with a thrilling 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 win over defending champion David Nalbandian of Argentina in the final of the last regular season tournament in front of 14,000 fans at the Bercy Sport stadium.
The 23-year-old from Le Mans was the first Frenchman to win here since Sebastien Grosjean in 2001 and in Shanghai from Nov 9-16 he will join defending champion Roger Federer, world No 1 Rafael Nadal, Djokovic, Andy Murray, Nikolay Davydenko, Roddick and Argentine Del Potro.
It will be Tsonga's first appearance in the Masters Cup which groups the eight best players over the ATP season.
Tsonga burst onto the world stage by reaching the Australian Open final in January where he lost to Novak Djokovic in four sets, but the injury-prone Frenchman was again sidelined during the summer with a knee injury that required an operation.
But Tsonga battled through the adversity to reach the final by defeating three top tenners in a row - Djokovic, to whom he lost in the Australian Open final, American Roddick, in a three-set thriller, and James Blake in a semi-final blow out.
It was the biggest win of his career to date for the former top amateur and sets him up for the first time for a crack at the biggest tournament in tennis outside of the four Grand Slam events.
"It's an amazing turnaround," he said. "Everything that has happened to me in the last few months is just incredible," he said.
"Less than two years ago I was ranked 250th in the world and I was playing in small clubs in small tournaments and I really wanted to get up to this level one day.
"Now here I am heading for Shanghai to play against the best players in the world."
In China Tsonga will be bidding to become the first Frenchman to win the Masters Cup and given the late season injury woes that have bedevilled the top names, he might just stand a chance.
Both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer were forced to withdraw from the Paris Masters, the Spaniard crippled by pain in his right knee, and Federer increasingly bothered by back pains that require him to take painkillers after tough games.
Roddick, Davydenko and Murray have also been injured recently, while Djokovic is far from the kind of form that won him the Australian Open in January and Del Potro has other things on his mind with the Davis Cup final against Spain in Mar del Plata looming large on the horizon just after Shanghai.
(AFP via China Daily November 4, 2008)