Tennis has a long and gruelling season with hardly any time for players to fit in some meaningful training blocks during the year. The men’s season lasts till the end of November, culminating with the Davis Cup finals and by the end of December, players are already travelling for the warm-up tournaments of the next season to start again. That’s how demanding the sport is.
Nevertheless, the season climax is boosted by the World Tour Finals, the show-piece event at the end of the year, where the top eight players of the season battle it out to take home the most coveted trophy on the calendar after the four grand slams. Personally, it has been two decades of looking forward to the year-end championships and this year is no different! These are the guys who have dominated the tour during the entire year, this is the elite. No match in this tournament is straight forward as the level of tennis is top notch.
None of the big 3 this year since 2001 they say? The excitement is still at its peak, ever highlighted by Sincaraz! (Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz; refer my previous article for more context)
The top eight players of the year are determined by their ranking points accumulated during the calendar year. The expectation would be that the players are drained by now, as these are the very same men who would have reached the latter stages of most of the tournaments during the season. But for most, the goal for the year is to qualify for this show-piece event and rest assured, give it their all, if qualified.
Sinner and Alcaraz top contenders
Novak Djokovic having withdrawn from the 2024 ATP Finals due to injury (or probably because he’s already achieved what he needed to at this tournament), Sinner and Alcaraz are the protagonists, as they have been during the entire season by splitting the four slams amongst themselves. But based on current form, Alexander Zverev is a close third in the top contenders list for the title this year. Moreover, he has also won this event twice in the past – 2018 and 2021. The only other past champion in the current eight is Daniil Medvedev, who seems to have hit a Sinner-Alcaraz wall – recording only one win each against them in their last 15 meetings! (1/7 wins against Alcaraz and 1/8 wins against Sinner).
The ATP World Tour Finals has a rich history with some illustrious names on the winning list. The tournament’s first edition took place in 1970 in Tokyo and since then, it has been held in fifteen different cities across the world, the latest one being in Turin. Looking back, who have dominated this prestigious event on the men’s side?
During the early 1970s, the Romanian Ilie Nastase dominated the event, winning 4/5 championships from 1971-75, only losing once in this period, which was in the final of 1974 to Guillermo Villas.
Jimmy Connors, surprisingly, in 11 appearances only won the event once, when he reached the final in 1977.
McEnroe’s prime years at the event were in the early 1980s and Becker’s in the late 1980s and early-mid 1990s. But the 1980s belonged to the Czech-American Ivan Lendl, who reached a whopping 9 consecutive finals at the event from 1980-88, which is a tournament record! He won 5 of them and while he lost two finals in straight sets to McEnroe in 1983 and 1984, his 7-5 loss to Becker in the final set tiebreaker in 1988 in still one of the most hard-fought matches in the tournament’s history.
In the 1990s, it was Sampras who took over, reaching 6 finals and winning 5 of them, one of them being an all-time classic against his great rival Becker in the 1996 final. Sampras’ four-hour win over Becker in the 1996 final in Hanover remains one of the best matches in the event’s history, where both players were playing well at the same time. Becker took the fourth set in a riveting tie-break, 13-11, but Sampras came back to take the match 6-4 in the fifth, clinching it on a 24-shot rally.
Federer domination
Lleyton Hewitt burst on to the scene in 2001 when he won the title in his home country in Sydney and then defended the title as well in 2002. However, from then onwards, it was Roger Federer who dominated the 2000s and till date has reached the highest number of finals at the event – 10. He won 4/5 times from 2003-07, losing only once in a 5-set marathon to the Argentine David Nalbandian in the ’05 final in a fifth set tiebreak. Federer then went on to win the title again in 2010 (see video below) and 2011, thus breaking Sampras’ and Lendl’s record of 5 titles.
It was in the 2010s when Djokovic found a different level and dominated the year-end championships during most of that decade. He won four consecutive titles from 20012- 15, a tournament record. During this phase, he had some great battles against Federer, who was the most successful player at the event till then. Arguably, Federer’s level was not the same as his dominant level during the mid 2000s, nevertheless, it was still a monumental effort by Djokovic to beat him in the 2012 and 2015 finals (2014 final against Federer was a walkover as Federer could not play due to injury). From 2012 to 2018, Djokovic made it to 6/7 finals, winning 5 of them, only losing to Murray in the 2016 final, a match which also decided the year-end number 1 for that year!
From 2017 to 2021, Zverev notched up 2 titles in 2018 and 2021 and Grigor Dimitrov, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Medvedev notched up 1 title each during this period. Djokovic overtook Federer in 2023 to win his 7th title when he defeated the home favourite and upcoming Jannik Sinner in the final (Sinner had defeated Djokovic in 3 sets earlier in the tournament during the Round Robin stage). It was Djokovic’s resurgence in his late 30s when he went on to win back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023, battling past this new generation, including Sinner and Alcaraz.
I have given weightage to both – titles won and finals reached. Finals reached is also included as it implies not only the consistency of qualifying for the event, but also the success of making it to the final stages.
In terms of finals played, Boris Becker, Lendl, Djokovic and Federer are right up there with 8+. However, Becker only won 3 and hence does not make it to the top 3. Sampras’ dominance in this event is well-known, including his fascinating victories over Becker. He won as many titles (5) as Lendl, however, only reached the final 6 times compared to Lendl’s 9 (consecutive too!) and if you go deeper and look at his match win% (shown below), it was much lower (71.4%) compared to Lendl’s (79.6%). Hence Lendl>Sampras.
Nastase has a very high winning%, but the matches played are too less, implying he played too few editions of this event. McEnroe on the other has a very low win%.
Lend has the highest win% of 79.6% which is phenomenal, considering he played 49 matches. However, Federer still has the highest number of wins at the event – 59 out of 76 matches played and still has a 77.6% win%! This is even higher than Djokovic’s 73.5 win%, who has also played 68 matches. Becker too has a good win% at 73.5% but on a lower base (49 matches played).
The number of editions played also demonstrates the consistency of the player year- on-year and Federer leads that list with 17, followed by Djokovic -16, Lendl -12 and Sampras and Becker tied at 11.
To conclude, based on the titles won, finals reached, win% and editions played, Djokovic, Federer and Lendl are arguably the best players in the tournament’s history. Lendl would come in third due to his lesser number of titles, same/lower number of finals reached and a high win% which is on a lower base due to lesser number of editions played.
And while we could argue that Federer is slightly better in terms of number of finals reached, match win%, and his number of qualifications for the event, in my opinion, Djokovic would rank slightly higher due to his more title wins (7 to Federer’s 6), which has more significance over other parameters.
Thanks for reading! Until next time.
