SUCH is the late clamour for the remaining places among the world’s elite eight at the Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai that many a player arriving at this week’s tournament in Paris has believed a calculator is almost as vital as a racket.

David Nalbandian and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are under no such illusions; they know winning today’s final is their only option.

Going into the BNP Parib-as Masters, the year’s concluding tournament in the showpiece nine-event series that are second only in prestige on the men’s tour to the four Grand Slams, the pair were well down the pecking order in the complicated qualifying points battle for the three Shanghai places to be claimed. However, both the Argentine and the Frenchman have played with a purpose over the last few days and now confront each other in a winner-takes-all scenario.

Nalbandian, who makes a habit of late season surges and won the Tennis Masters Cup title three years ago when he arrived as a late replacement for an injured Andy Roddick, followed up from ending Andy Murray’s 14-match unbeaten run on Friday by registering an impressive 6-1 5-7 6-4 over Nikolay Dav-ydenko, who had confirmed his Shanghai ticket.

The Argentine, who in three weeks will spearhead his nation’s bid to win the Davis Cup for the first time with Spain the opposition in Mar del Plata, is the defending champion at Ber-cy and apart from a brief lapse in the second set, maintained the precision he showed against Murray to underline the fact.

But the main Parisian feast was presented by Tsonga who announced himself as a star with his charismatic march to January’s Australian Open final but then had his competitive year decimated by knee surgery that forced him out of the French Open and Wimbledon.

Playing with same exciting panache t h a t h e showed in Melbourne, Tsonga beat James Blake 64 6-3 to not only finally rule the American out of the race for Shanghai place but also eliminate fellow Frenchman Gilles Simon and confirm another Argentine, Juan Martin del Potro, as the seventh qualifier.

In a partisan atmosphere, 13th seeded Tsonga never once showed any indication he would buckle under the pressure and smote 12 aces past the infinitely more experienced Blake.