Barclays ATP World Tour Finals: Davydenko is champ.

An unlikely champion, Nikolay Davydenko, emerged yesterday at the end-of-year finals. He beat the Argentine Del Potro 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and twenty three minutes with some pinpoint hitting to go one better than his runner-up finish last year and pocket almost £1 million. Amidst the big personalities of the tour, the Russian tends to go by unnoticed - “he keeps himself to himself” seemed to be the most that anyone could offer about him. A triumph of substance over style, one might say.

Davydenko had dispatched Roger Federer in the semi-finals on Saturday, winning a deciding set 7-5, after having lived dangerously at 0-30 when 4-5 down. It was a tenacious effort because Federer has made a habit of dropping the first set and coming back strongly - he was heavy odds-on to prevail. The overriding impression that I got from this match was that Federer didn’t give his opponent enough respect and simply thought he had to turn up to win – a winning 12-0 head-to-head perhaps led him into complacency. Instead of seeking out the lines with his winners, he lazily went for ‘percentage’ area shots, which Davydenko, very reminiscent of Lleyton Hewitt in his prime, was too quick for, always making the world number one play one more stroke. It wasn’t an entirely defensive display however, as, despite his whippet-thin physique, he packs a bit more into his groundstrokes than Hewitt ever did, and he came up with some decisive winners.

His opponent in the final was Juan Martin Del Potro, who had had a titanic struggle with Robin Söderling in the Saturday evening semi-final, which he won 6-7(1-7), 6-3, 7-6(7-3). Despite the closeness of the scoreline, it was always Del Potro’s match to win or lose, as he possesses that extra shot-making ability. His opponents must dread seeing the big man plant his feet inside the baseline to wind up for those big forehands.

The final itself was relatively straightforward for Davydenko, whose unerring accuracy proved too much for a sluggish Del Potro, who apparently only got to bed at 3 am after his semi-final. Breaks in the fourth game of the first and the ninth game of the second set were sufficient.

Much has been said of the scheduling, that it is disadvantageous on the player playing in the evening / night match to have to come out again on the following day. This is largely bunkum – if they were playing the best of five sets on a sapping surface then fair enough, but, finely honed athletes that they are, the workload is minimal. In Del Potro’s case it was more of a cumulative effect of (a) hardly having played in the run-up to the tournament due to injury and (b) all of his matches unusually having gone the distance.

The event itself has been successfully staged - just as well, as the O2 Arena will be hosting the finals for the next four years. There is some room for improvement but, having seen the package first hand, I felt that the basic rock ‘n’ roll approach (starting with the gladiatorial Clash intro and continued with snatches of the likes of The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen at the turnarounds) worked well. The sponsors will probably be hoping for a more congruent winner next year!