Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the 2008 BNP Paribas Masters

David Nalbandian at the 2008 BNP Paribas Masters2

The 2008 Paris Masters (also known as the ''

BNP Paribas Masters The Paris Masters is an annual tennis tournament for male professional players held in Paris, France. It is played indoors at the AccorHotels Arena, in the neighborhood of Bercy. The event is part of the ATP Tour Masters 1000 on the Association o ...

'' for sponsorship reasons) was a men's tennis tournament played on indoor hard courts. It was the 36th edition of the Paris Masters, and was part of the ATP Masters Series of the

2008 ATP Tour The 2008 ATP Tour was the global elite men's professional tennis circuit organised by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for the 2008 tennis season. The ATP Tour is the elite tour for professional tennis organized by the Association of ...

. It took place at the Palais omnisports de Paris-Bercy in Paris, France, from 25 October through 2 November 2008. The singles draw was headlined by year-end World No. 1, Beijing Olympics singles gold medalist,

French Open The French Open (french: Internationaux de France de tennis), also known as Roland-Garros (), is a major tennis tournament held over two weeks at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris, France, beginning in late May each year. The tournament and ven ...

and Wimbledon, Monte Carlo, Hamburg, Toronto Masters champion Rafael Nadal,

ATP ATP may refer to: Companies and organizations * Association of Tennis Professionals, men's professional tennis governing body * American Technical Publishers, employee-owned publishing company * ', a Danish pension * Armenia Tree Project, non ...

No. 2, US Open, Estoril,

Halle Halle may refer to: Places Germany * Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt ** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt ** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany ** Hall ...

and Basel titlist, Olympic doubles gold medalist Roger Federer, and

Australian Open The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. Th ...

, Indian Wells, Rome Masters winner Novak Djokovic. Also announced were US Open runner-up, Cincinnati, Madrid Masters and recent St. Petersburg titlist

Andy Murray Sir Andrew Barron Murray (born 15 May 1987) is a British professional tennis player from Scotland. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 41 weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 in 2016. Murray h ...

, Valencia and

's-Hertogenbosch s-Hertogenbosch (), colloquially known as Den Bosch (), is a city and municipality in the Netherlands with a population of 157,486. It is the capital of the province of North Brabant and its fourth largest by population. The city is south of th ...

champion David Ferrer, Nikolay Davydenko, Andy Roddick and David Nalbandian.

Notable stories

Race to the championships

As the final tournament of the season before the Tennis Masters Cup, several players battled for the remaining spots at the year-end singles event, which plays host to the world's top eight players. Coming into the tournament, twelve players were vying for the final three spots (in descending order of race ranking): Andy Roddick, Juan Martín del Potro, Gilles Simon, David Ferrer, James Blake, Stanislas Wawrinka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, David Nalbandian, Fernando Verdasco, Gaël Monfils, and Robin Söderling. Roddick was the first to qualify, when he defeated

Madrid Masters There are two sporting events named the Madrid Masters: *Madrid Open (tennis) The Madrid Open ( es, Masters de Madrid, link=no), currently sponsored by Mutua Madrileña and known as the Mutua Madrid Open, is a joint men's and women's professional ...

runner-up Gilles Simon in the third round. The semifinals wins of Nalbandian over Nikolay Davydenko and Tsonga over Blake assured del Potro of a place, with the championship match set to decide the final qualifier. Home favorite Jo-Wilfried Tsonga eventually defeated defending champion David Nalbandian in three sets, to move to the eight place in the ATP Race, and qualify for the year-end championships. The doubles event also included a pursuit between Poles Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski, South Africans Jeff Coetzee and

Wesley Moodie Wesley Moodie (born 14 February 1979) is a former professional tennis player from South Africa. Career Early life and college career He began to play tennis at an early age and won the South African Junior Masters tournament in February 1996. ...

, and Brazilians

Marcelo Melo Marcelo is a given name, the Spanish and Portuguese form of Marcellus. The Italian version of the name is Marcello, differing in having an additional "l". Marcelo may refer to: * Marcelo Costa de Andrade (born 1967), Brazilian serial killer, rapi ...

and

André Sá André Rezende Sá (; born 6 May 1977) is a former Brazilian tennis player. In singles, he was a Wimbledon quarterfinalist in 2002. Sá reached the semifinals of ATP tournaments in Memphis and Hong Kong in 2000 and 2001 respectively. He reached ...

for the last spot of the year-end doubles championships. Melo and Sa lost their chance to qualify when they were defeated by

Jonas Björkman Jonas Lars Björkman (; born 23 March 1972) is a Swedish former professional tennis player. He is a former world No. 1 in doubles, and also a former world No. 4 in singles. Björkman retired from professional tennis after competing at the 2008 T ...

and Kevin Ullyett in the quarterfinals, while the two other teams advanced to meet in the semis, in a match to decide of the last qualifiers. Coetzee and Moodie eventually came out on top in straight sets to clinch their first Tennis Masters Cup ticket together, the first ever for Coetzee, and the second for Moodie, who had already participated to the 2005 edition with Stephen Huss.

Finals

Singles

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga defeated David Nalbandian 6–3, 4–6, 6–4 * It was Tsonga's 2nd title of the year, and overall. It was his 1st career Masters title.

Doubles

/ Kevin Ullyett defeated Jeff Coetzee /

6–2, 6–2

References

External links

Official website

ATP tournament profile

Singles draw

Doubles draw
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