Mardy Fish has a tough opener at the Swiss Indoors on Tuesday against fellow hard hitting American James Blake.
Fish currently lies in eighth place in the ATP rankings with a buffer of over 500 points between him and his nearest rival but with 1500 points at stake over the next couple of weeks, the American can still ill afford to relax.
The field in Basel is super strong and Fish will have to be right on the money to avoid a first round exit here as Blake has been playing some superb tennis recently. The veteran former world number four has enjoyed a resurgence over the past few months and beat Juan Martin Del Potro on the way to reaching the Stockholm semis a couple of weeks ago.
He's already had a taste of the courts this week, coming through qualifying over the weekend.
Fish has not competed since his early exit in Shanghai at the start of October and he'll need to be sharp from the outset as this looks set to be a big serving encounter and on such a fast court, it'll be just a few points here and there which decide the outcome.
Fish leads 3-2 on the head-to-head and look for him to edge this in three.
