Roger Federer may be the old man of tennis, but he’s still breaking records.  Jo-Wilfried Tsonga wasn’t the player he expected to play in the finals.  Perhaps it should have been Rafael Nadal or Andy Murray or Novak Djokovic.  But Nadal was affected by a stomach bug, and just lacked his usual intensity.  Andy Murray didn’t even survive one round having been injured prior to London.  Djokovic lacked practice and looked awfully rusty.  That left the second group, Tsonga, Berdych, and even an alternate, Tipsarevic to add some excitement.

Tomas Berdych apparently had something of a fever, and didn’t feel 100% playing Tsonga.  That, and playing on Friday in the late match then Saturday in the early match, meant Berdych wasn’t as sharp.  He tried not to play up the excuse.  After all, he said, he did have a break opportunity, and who knows what happens if he gets that break.

The first set swung on a single break in the middle of the first set, one which Federer won 6-3.  The second set looked like it was heading this direction with a 4-2 lead.  Federer even had break chances to go double-break up to 5-2, but didn’t capitalize.  Tsonga was in danger again of losing his serve late in the second set, but again, hit big shots to get him into the tiebreak.

In the tiebreak, Federer got up a mini-break, but Tsonga got it back, the Federer got another mini-break, and Tsonga got it back again.  Then, as Tsonga took both his serve points at 5-6 in the tiebreak to go up 7-6, Tsonga had a set point on Federer’s serve.  Tsonga hit a hard inside-out return and Federer was unable to pick it up.  Tsonga took set 2 in a tiebreak.

The third set mostly went to serve, but at 4-3, with Tsonga trying to tie it up, Federer and Tsonga went ad-Federer, deuce, ad-Federer, deuce for a string of points with Tsonga making huge shots to save break points, but alas, it wasn’t enough despite cheers from Tsonga’s dad who was in the audience, and Federer secured the break, then served big to take the third set, 6-3.

With that, Federer duplicates the feat of sweeping the round robin and maxing out his 1500 points, as he did last year.  This will put a 800 points lead over Andy Murray heading into the new year.  Federer is defending points in Doha which usually features Rafael Nadal.  Andy Murray used to play this tournament, but due to the chilly temperatures at Doha (Doha is played in a desert, which is hot in the daytime, but chilly at night when all the matches are played), Murray felt it was less than ideal preparation.  This year, he’ll play Brisbane for the first time.  Last year, Soderling and Roddick played this just before the floods hit the city.

Simply by reaching the final, Federer accomplished two feats.  First, he reached his 100th final.   Furthermore, he will finish the year as the world number 3, surpassing Andy Murray, who publicly proclaimed his desire to finish as number 3.  However, failing to play Basel, losing early in Paris, and having to withdraw from London winless, on top of Federer winning Basel, Paris, and London meant Murray would, once again, finish the year as the world number 4.

With the win, Federer wins his 6th year-end championship and should be within a match (or tied) with most matches won (Lendl had lead this record).  By contrast, Nadal has never won the year-end championship and only reached the finals once.  Djokovic has won the year-end championship once, but that was several years ago (beating Davydenko).  He’s also won his 70th title.  He is 7 titles from tying John McEnroe.  This seems reachable in probably two years.  Federer has stopped winning 8-10 titles a year, and wins about 4-5 titles a year.  This makes catching Lendl a bit tough as he has 94 titles, and Federer would need 15 titles to catch up, which might take 3-4 years, if Federer can maintain his level, but Connors reaching 109 titles might be very hard to catch up, as that’s pretty much 40 titles away, or more than half the titles he’s won so far.