Final tournaments of 2024

Couple of months to go and Sinner likely to end the year at number one.

Bit closer in the women's with Sabalenka hunting down Swiatek at the top.

Davis Cup going on at the moment. Britain won 2-1 in Manchester against Finland, with Billy Harris, who has come from nowhere this season, getting a maiden DC win. Sterner challenges await GB over the weekend in the form of Argentina and Canada. Draper didn't play v Finland so may now feature.

GB were knocked out of the DC, with Draper losing both his matches and complaining of fatigue.

Been a strange summer which won't happen again for many years. The problem was the Olympics which saw those who wished to play in it switching back to clay and then having to adjust to hard courts for the USO.

First, the Olympics won't happen again until 2028 and secondly, it will be in LA with players moving seamlessly on to the US hard-court swing followed by the USO.

Today has seen that rarity - a British women's win in a main tour event. Sonay Kartal won a 250pt tourney in Monastir, Tunisia. A qualifier ranked 151, Kartal will now be on the verge of the top 100.

Asian swing in full, er, swing at the moment.

It's thrown up a bit of history in that Marin Cilic, ranked around 700-something, became the lowest ranked player in the Open Era to win a tournament.

At the end of a long year, not helped by the Paris staging of the Olympics, one or two players are dropping out of tourneys. Alcaraz, for one, has spoken of the heavy schedule

Jack Draper has had an excellent straight-sets win today over Hurkacz in Tokyo. Draper is up to 20th in the world and you have to feel he can go even higher.

Fatigue as much as form is hitting the top players. Five seeds are already out in Tokyo so this is a great chance for Draper.

Sinner may not be off the hook after all. WADA, the doping body, have referred his drug thing to a higher authority (God?) and are calling for a one-to-two-year ban.

The uncertainty doesn't seem to have affected Sinner's form as he's made the final in Beijing where he will face Alcaraz.

All the seeds were eventually knocked out in Tokyo where the title went to Fils of France.

Alcaraz and Sinner have just fought out a 3hr+ plus final in Beijing with Alcaraz coming out on top after a final-et tiebreak.

The Spaniard was a break up in both the first and third sets only to be pegged back to tiebreaks.

Sinner took the first-set tiebreak and then the match, from looking at the stats, appeared to hinge on a mammoth eight-deuce game towards the end of the second set. Sinner had two BPs in this game but Carlos held on, broke and then held again to level the match.

The topsy-turvy nature of the match continued in the final set with Alcaraz going 4-2 up only for Sinner to get it back on serve. It seemed the Italian would triumph when he went 3-0 up in the tiebreak. But Alcaraz, remarkably, took SEVEN points in a row to take the title.

While we await the (final?) outcome of the Sinner drug controversy, it's worth noting that Simona Halep who started playing after her ban was shortened and then got injured is playing again.

She won her first match in a minor tourney but was well beaten today. Say what you like about the Sinner situation, at least Halep had to contend with being out of the game and suspended for long periods after her drug thingy.

It could well be that Sinner will, after all, be suspended now. Whether it will be as long as two years which WADA's worst-case scenario prefers, remains to be seen. I know some of the players think Sinner, as number one, has been fortunate to have been dealt with so leniently; at least so far.