World No. 5 David Ferrer exited early in his opening matchup, seriously putting his dreams of an appearance at the ATP World Tour Finals in jeopardy at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo on Monday.

The Spaniard took the first set after breaking fellow compatriot Marcel Granollers once but the 28-year-old Granollers fought back to break the 2013 French Open finalist twice in the next two sets to win it at 4-6 6-4 6-4 in two hours and eight minutes.

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Granollers will face American Steve Johnson in the next round who defeated qualifier Hiroki Moriya of Japan 7(7)-6(4) 6-2.

Ferrer, 32, recently had a split-up with coach Jose Francisco Altur and seems to have affected his concentration.

He also exited early in last week's Shenzhen Open in his opening match up against Viktor Troicki of Serbia where he was top seeded.

"I lost my focus in the second set," Ferrer said. "I have not been playing well recently and have got on a bad run of results."

Ferrer, has only won one ATP tourney this year in Buenos Aires last February and is currently in seventh place with Tomas Berdych just 25 points behind in the list of contenders for the eight-man short list in London.

Wolrd No. 1 Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have already qualified for the November stint in London and have only five remaining slots available.

Australian Open champion Stan Wawrinka is top seed in the tournament and just needs to enter the finals in order to clinch a spot at the prestigious season-ender.

Third seed Milos Raonic is also in contention at ninth place, just 95 points behind Ferrer and 70 points behind Berdych.

Another contender in the event is crowd favorite and Malaysian Open champion Ken Nishikori who is in sixth place in the list and stands of becoming the first ever Asian to compete at the O2 Arena.

TagsDavid Ferrer, Tomas Berdych, Stan Wawrinka, Milos Raonic, Ken Nishikori