BlackRock Tour of Champions

Muster Is The New No.1

Muster Denies Ivanisevic To Win First Graz Title

Thomas Muster won his second Delta Tour of Champions event of the year with a 6-4, 3-6, 10-7 (on a Champions? Tie-Break) victory over Goran Ivanisevic in the Graz final on Saturday.

Muster, who had never before won his home event, outlasted Ivanisevic to displace the Croatian as the No.1 player in the Stanford Financial Champions Tour Rankings.

To complete a sensational week for the home nation Austria, Alex Antonitsch defeated Andres Gomez 3-6, 6-3, 10-3 (on a Champions' Tie-Break) to seal third place.

It means that now only 135 points separate Muster, Ivanisevic and John McEnroe on the Road to London, as the battle for the year-end No.1 position hots up.

McEnroe won the first event on the 2005 Delta Tour of Champions - the European section of the worldwide ATP Champions Tour - when he triumphed in Frankfurt in February. Sergi Bruguera overcame Pat Cash in the Doha final in April, and Ivanisevic also beat Cash a week later in the Hong Kong final. Muster took the first clay court title of the year with victory in Rome in May, and then Cedric Pioline triumphed in Novi, Croatia in June. McEnroe won his second title of the year in the Algarve last week.

The Tour now moves on to Paris, where another all-star field including McEnroe Boris Becker, Sergi Bruguera, Jim Courier, Goran Ivanisevic, Thomas Muster and Cedric Pioline will do battle between the 15th and 18th of September.

Players compete for points throughout the year to qualify for The Champions Masters at the Royal Albert Hall in London, November 29 - December 4. The top ten players in the Stanford Financial Champions Tour Rankings after all events are complete will qualify automatically. The field in London will increase to 12 with the addition of two wild cards.

To be eligible to compete on the ATP Champions Tour, players must have been either a World No.1 during their competitive playing careers, a Grand Slam singles finalist, or a singles player on a victorious Davis Cup team, and no longer active on the ATP tour. Each event can also invite two players of its choice to take wild cards.