Djokovic beats Federer to win ATP World Tour Finals

For the fourth consecutive year, appropriately, Novak Djokovic is your Barclays ATP World Tour Finals champion.

The statistics are certainly impressive.

There will also be a look at the players and the GB backroom team, among other things.

This wasn’t just a World Tour Finals rematch.

“For me, Rafa is the unique player in the field”.

“He’s playing great. It’s going to be hard for him to play a bad year, that’s for sure”.

Ferrer, on the Great Britain vs. Belgium Davis Cup final: “They have a really good chance [to] win, one of them, the Davis Cup”. “For him it’s an advantage because he gets a second chance, and he’s in another final”.

Why you might consider it the best: In terms of winning percentage, no-one can rival McEnroe.

Sunday is a repeat of last year’s final, which Djokovic won by a walkover after Federer withdrew with an injury, something he has rarely done in his career. Mentally you have to be at your peak at all times. Roger is certainly the player that has challenged Novak the most this year. He started the season with his fifth title in Melbourne Park, later in the year he won his third Wimbledon title, and he finished the Grand Slam season off with a second title from Flushing Meadows. However, perhaps the ATP is wary of the problems the WTA faced when it regularly moved its season-ending event around. Thank you everyone for making this year so special.

· And Djokovic this year has faced a clearly weakened Nadal, who spent the year recovering from numerous ailments, a slowly – very slowly – aging Federer and an inconsistent Andy Murray.

He continues to rise through the ranks of all-time greats and now lies four Grand Slam titles behind Nadal, and seven behind Federer. “It’s been a long season, but the best of my life”, he said.

With Nadal’s golden age most likely coming to an end as his body slows with the ravages of his physical approach, the elastic Djokovic, whose movement around a tennis court quite frequently defies belief, has emerged as the pre-eminent performer of this generation.

Remarkably, the result means after 90 matches against Federer and Nadal, Djokovic is tied with both.

The 34-year-old Federer was seeking a seventh ATP Finals title, first since 2011. Furthermore, he made it to the semi-finals of every tournament he entered.

· During his take-no-prisoners 1974, Connors competed mostly against an aging group of Australian players in the Slams – notably Ken Rosewall – who were past their prime. He’s still just 28 and has 10 Grand Slam titles. After his latest title to close out 2015, the overarching question is whether he can follow this up next season. Only Laver, as it happens, and that was in 1962 before the Open era had begun. “I used to work more precisely towards him”, said the world No.3.

Why you might not consider it the best: You might argue that Laver himself had a better 1962. He is also now tied with Federer 22-22 in their head-to-head.

No other player in the world top 10 has lost fewer than 10 matches for the season, showing Djokovic’s complete dominance. Indeed, the sport as a whole might be nearly incomparable now…

“It’s no fun to lose but it’s better to lose than not to play at all like a year ago”, said Federer.

Why you might consider it the best: Purely measured on the basis of winning percentage, no-one can touch Navratilova.

The Serb missed out only by one match this year, losing to Stan Wawrinka in the French Open final. Does everything else make up for that? She won in all sorts of ways in 1988. Federer handed Djokovic just his sixth loss of the year in the round-robin segment – a win that nudged Federer back out in front in their rivalry, 23-22.