Tennis in Britain? Sounds about right. But in the Winter? Oh go on then.

This month saw the ATP World Tour come to the O2 Arena in London. This is quite a rare event for Britain; tennis in the depths of Winter. We go absolutely ga-ga over tennis in the summer with Wimbledon taking up two glorious weeks of the BBC's airtime and strawberries and cream coming out of our ears. It's a bit odd though to see tennis happening in November, not that I'm complaining. 

A tournament between the top 8 players in the world is always going to be worth watching. It's like Wimbledon only without all the chaff you get at the beginning. Once again Britain placed its hopes on Andy Murray and while he gave it his all he ultimately crashed out in the group stages. It wasn't all bad as you got to see Carlos Tevez having a knock around with Juan Martin del Potro while everyone waited to see if Murray went through or not. While Tevez wasn't brilliant by any means, he may consider taking up tennis instead of football. He'll probably win more games than at Man City...

It was an odd tournament really. Here in Britain to the casual tennis fan you'd think the sport would consist of Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. None of these guys won it, hell they didn't even get to the final. Both Murray and Nadal crashed out in the group stages, while Federer suffered an upset in losing to the eventual winner Nikolay Davydenko. 

As a tournament it was cracking stuff. Despite it being the end of the year all the players gave it their all. Moreover the O2 Arena made a magnificent venue. I was lucky enough to go there earlier this month to see Muse in concert. Who'd have thought that the Millenium Dome would actually become something useful?

Luckily the O2 Arena has the ATP World Tour for five years. Here's hoping that future tournaments are as good as the one that's just gone.