ATP Tour Final comes to the O2

From ATP World Final 2009

Bringing together the 8 best singles players and 8 best doubles pairings under the roof of the O2 was bound to create a good atmosphere – and make one of them the British number one and you are on to a sure thing. That is the ATP Tour Final, that brings the tennis year to a close… Both the singles matches on the opening night turned out to be cracking matches – both going to three sets – with the underdogs, Juan Martin Del Potro and Fernando Verdasco pushing the favourites – Andy Murray and  Roger Federer for most of the first two sets. Unfortunately – or fortunately depending on your point of view, neither of them was able to put in the final killer shots and pull off shocks! The doubles matches on the other hand where fairly one sides events. The abuse of the sporting spectacle by reducing any game that reaches deuce to a single additional point and playing a “match tiebreaker” if the first two sets are shared seams to devalue doubles – which if anything has the potential to be more entertaining than singles – which can turn into a pure contest of the serve with rallies few and far between, not a problem doubles encounters – even in the artificially shortened matches there where many wonderful rallies that could have gone either way.

Leaving for Hawaii the next morning, I only attempted to get tickets for the first day. Having missed out on the pre-sales competition from the ATP, I managed to get a poor ticket for the afternoon session- up with the gods on the 4th level, and a reasonable ticket for the evening… Imagine my surprise (or lack of it) to receive an email from ticket master - “last minute seats court side available” – this is getting too frequent and very annoying – my guess is that these are tickets reserved to combine with corporate entertainment that isn’t happening at the moment. It is very poor that genuine fans are being sold seats miles from the action thinking they are the only ones left, only for better ones to be freed close to the event.

But at relative cheap prices I went for it and had two seats I could have used for both sessions – the ones I did use right behind the baseline – it felt like the serves where coming straight at me! I also took a chance, and for the first time had my DSLR with me in the O2 – despite the “you shouldn’t use that” from the bag inspector at the door… Once I was in there where DSLR everywhere, and a few video cameras. Events are just going to have to accept their patrons want pictures to remember the event by, and wouldn’t the participants prefer those where the best pictures possible rather than phone camera pictures? They are never going to be able to prevent phones with camera being used, so the cat is out of the bag…  I can understand why artists that are staging multiple concerts with the same content don’t what video of it being put on YouTube – but still pictures for personal use shouldn’t cause anyone to lose revenue – and for unique event such as sport they can only generate more business for the next event!