The ATP World Tour Finals in London opens its doors with Great Britain’s home hope and a 17-time major champion, each facing a man making his first appearance at this event.

Andy Murray v. Kei Nishikori

The London crowd at the 02 Arena will need to get their finger nails ready as home favorite Andy Murray takes center stage against the rising Japanese sensation Kei Nishikori on Sunday afternoon.

Nishikori and Murray are in Group B, paired with Roger Federer and Milos Raonic, who will play the opening night session singles match on Sunday.

The post-U. S. Open stretch has been quite fruitful for both Nishikori and Murray. Nishikori captured titles in Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo, while Murray put hard yards in to find victories in Shenzhen, Vienna, and Valencia. It’s worth noting that Murray’s quest for a World Tour Finals berth could have turned out a lot differently had he not saved five match points in the Shenzhen and Valencia finals against Tommy Robredo.

Nishikori has never beaten Andy Murray, but all three of his losses to the Scot came before 2014. In fact, these two last met in January 2013, and it should go without saying that Murray will be seeing an entirely different Nishikori tomorrow.

Despite the fact that he enters the match as the underdog, Nishikori has been the far more convincing player the entire year, which includes this post-U. S. Open stretch. As mentioned, Murray saved five match points in the Shenzhen and Valencia finals, but he was also forced to break to stay in the tournament in the Vienna final against David Ferrer. His entire fall season would have gone awry in the absence of his well-timed escapes.

More worryingly for Murray, Nishikori is going to present all types of matchup problems. Murray typically owns his opponents in backhand-to-backhand rallies but against Nishikori, it will be a tougher riddle to crack because Nishikori possesses one of the deadliest backhands in tennis. If these backhand-to-backhand rallies turn into slugfests, Nishikori is going to have the advantage. It’ll be key for Murray to mix it up off his backhand side to not allow Nishikori to see the same strike zone on backhand after backhand.

Murray’s second serve is also going to get punished dramatically. There is almost no doubt about it. Unless Nishikori decides to play unusually passively off the return, Murray will need to be ready to use all of his retrieval skills during second-serve points.

Even if this court does play slowly, it’s not as if Nishikori’s weapons will be restricted. He’s proven his capacity to hit through any surface, and even though we are talking about one of the best defenders in the game in Murray, let’s not forget that Nishikori was hitting Rafael Nadal off the court on clay in Madrid earlier this year.

Prediction: Nishikori in two sets

Roger Federer v. Milos Raonic

It was just over a week ago when 23-year-old Milos Raonic scored the biggest victory of his entire career when he topped Roger Federer in the quarterfinals of the Paris Masters. Raonic orchestrated a serving master class, one that was impressive even by his lofty standards. The Canadian smacked down 21 aces, only faced one break point the entire match, and won a mind boggling 65% of his second-serve points.

Federer will take solace in the fact that it took a career performance from Raonic to beat him 7-6 7-5. One must wonder if Raonic has started to answer some of the hard questions Federer has thrown his way in 2014. In their matches at Wimbledon and Cincinnati this year, Raonic’s serves were easy pickings for Federer. Despite being struck with incredible amounts of pace, they lacked meaningful direction and didn’t require Federer to think much about covering the box laterally. Raonic will have to implement power and direction if he expects to duplicate his successes from Paris over the Swiss.

The main problem for Raonic in this matchup comes off the return of serve. Federer holds serve as well as any player the game has ever seen, and Raonic returns about as poorly as anyone out there. The reason Raonic plays so many tiebreaks has to do as much with his return of serve as it does with his serve. He’s so tough to break but often fails to provide resistance on his return games.

The match these two played in Paris was their first meeting indoors. There won’t be any secrets coming into this match, and if both men come out with their best stuff, it may come down to a few points here and there in one or two tiebreaks to decide this encounter.

Prediction:  Federer in three sets