Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece holds up the trophy and celebrates with the ball kids after defeating Austria's Dominic Thiem at the ATP World Finals in London. Photo / AP
Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece holds up the trophy and celebrates with the ball kids after defeating Austria's Dominic Thiem at the ATP World Finals in London. Photo / AP
Question: Who just won this year's season-ending ATP tennis title in London? The answer is the world ranked number 6 player Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Surely you remember that? It was only last week when the young Greek achieved his best result on the men's tour to date by beating Dominic Thiemin three sets. C'mon don't tell me this one slipped by unnoticed, drowned beneath all that talk around who'll be the next All Black coach or lost among the statistical brilliance of BJ Watling's double ton in Tauranga!
This was the guy's biggest career win, the richest money prize on tour, highly significant and deserving of more attention than it's been getting! Or is it?
The problem that tennis has is the same situation that PGA golf finds itself in. Too many tournaments that, although all part of the season's circuit, end up blending into one big who won what when, how could you possibly remember and apart from the Grand Slams who the heck really cares?
For golf simply replace "Grand Slams" with the words "Major Championships".
And before you even start to argue about this, let's do a little test. If you consider yourself a true tennis or golf fan then the answer to this next question will come easier than Rafa accounting for next year's first-round opponent at Roland Garros.
Grand Slams aside, name any three winners of any other tournaments on this year's tour.
Golf fans, you do the same with the 2019 PGA schedule.
Almost impossible isn't it? Sure, the sight of Tiger winning the Masters is stuck uppermost in the memory, as is Novak stealing Wimbledon off Roger in another titanic five-setter, but the rest? About as important to the general populace as the last time you played and beat your best mate.
Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece holds up the trophy and celebrates with the ball kids after defeating Austria's Dominic Thiem at the ATP World Finals in London. Photo / AP
This is what these two sports have done to themselves through sheer greed and a saturation of events that individually fail to capture either interest or attention.
Of course, the absolute diehard trainspotting tragics of both sports will argue tooth and nail that all these events provide many more talking points than just ranking ones.
It's impossible to argue against blind devotion so I won't.
Instead I'll offer a truth to end on. You tennis numpties may well believe that most people care about who won that end-of-year ATP title but reality is most sports fans have more interest in the latest tantrum from Nick Kyrgios than anything about any of the many forgettable tour titles.
