Tennis Singles, 2024: Winners and Others

 

Photo Credit: Filip Mroz, Unsplash.

I may have a bit of a problem. 

When I decided to stop liking football (because I have a really fragile heart; I don’t understand how I can start liking a team and after they’ve won a few times they just start to flop like mad), I replaced my source of pain with tennis. Tennis has not been much better. My greatest heartbreak came in 2021 (and I will not elaborate), but at least it taught me to just like the game, and not care about the players. 

I mean, I still care about the players. But if the one I’m rooting for doesn’t win, I move on. I genuinely just shrug, go, ‘And so? Mchew,’ and eat whatever I was eating before I saw the news. 

But tennis is fun. When I started following it, like, really following it, it awed me to think that pretty much every week, except for slam weeks, there could be up to five tournaments going on. Players would start the year on hardcourts in New Zealand and Australia, transition to hardcourts and clay in South America and the Middle East, chase masters in America, shuffle about in European dirt, endure a torturous five weeks of grass, return to the comfort–or pain, if you’re Daniil Medvedev–of clay for a bit, and then close out the year on hardcourts in the Americas and Asia. It took a while for me to understand the classifications of tournaments. Slams, the big shiny events we hear the most about. Masters, lower than slams, but still a big deal. 500s and 250s, equally respectable. The year-end finals, also referred to as the 5th slam. 

I particularly like discovering new talent. (‘Discovering new talent.’ Hehe. I sound so high and mighty, like I’m some scout, or one of those poachers from big design brands that will steal an athlete to promote their new clothes the moment said athlete gets their name on a slam. But I digress.

I apologize. I’ve been digressing this entire post.) 

Let me organize my thoughts. 

1. There are a lot of tournaments in tennis. 

2. It's hard for me sometimes to remember exactly which ones. Actually, it’s not that hard. But it annoys me somewhat that there isn’t one place for me to see what tournaments happened in one year, on both the WTA and ATP sides. (WTA is the women’s tournaments, and ATP is the men’s.) Tennis is such that opponents keep meeting, and knowledge of their head-to-head is nice to have.

3. I decided to collate my own list. That’s…what I’ve been trying to say. In the last twelve hundred words. 

So if you’re a tennis buff, or just getting into tennis, or you just don’t really care, you just chanced on my blog by accident (hey, welcome! Do you like pineapple juice? It’s the best juice), HERE’s the full list of ATP and WTA winners and runners-up for tournaments completed in the tennis calendar for 2024. (These are the ones I knew and followed. If I missed any, it probably didn’t happen. If it did, please ignore it.)

• I recorded 121 tournaments. I also included the Olympics winners in the list. 

• It only features singles, because when I started making the list that’s all I was interested in, and by the time I thought I wanted to add doubles too the year had gone by some. 

• It also only features tournaments that are 250 and above. So no Challenger events, no 125s, no ITFs, none of those. 

• I tried to fancy up the slams records a little bit, and include which tournaments were indoor. That indoor part I didn’t do very religiously. 

If you really don’t like tennis, at all, and all of that is jargon to you, I am genuinely happy for you. Tennis is painful. Okay? I had to deal with Roger Federer retiring. Serena Williams retiring. Rafa’s retired now. Will I get over it? Well. 

And then one day I’ll wake up and hear that…actually, I think I’ll be okay from here on. I’m not as emotionally invested in any of these players. But I do love to watch them play. 

A few insights, in case you want quick hits and don’t care to look through the entire list: 

• Jannik Sinner’s been the most successful tennis player this year in singles, on both the men’s and women’s sides. He made nine finals, and won eight. On fire. Will he maintain form in 2025? Hard to say. Tennis is pretty cutthroat. I don’t know what fortifications Novak Djokovic is making for next year, and anyone who’s watched him play knows that even if he had a relatively quiet 2024 (a quiet 2024 where he still won Olympic gold), it would be unwise to write him off. 

• Diana Shnaider won 4 titles this year! Now, she’s not the woman with the most singles titles this year (that’s former world number 1, Iga Swiatek, who bagged 5), but Shnaider won a title across all surfaces: grass, hard court, and clay. That’s a feat even some slam winners have not achieved. Plus, she won her first title this year. Will I stick out my neck and say 2025 is going to be fabulous for her? Absolutely not. Anyone who watches the WTA knows it’s incredibly unpredictable. Plus, she didn’t get as far in slams as I’d have liked, and didn’t particularly threaten the top tenners. However, I’ll look out for her. 

• Carlos Alcaraz Garfia is still scary. It is not nice. 

• Casper Ruud won a 500! 

• When you sleep tonight, sleep happy. The best named tournament across both tours is still the Transylvania Open. Dracula!

Realizing now that if I don’t stop now I’ll just keep talking about tennis. Unfortunately I genuinely enjoy it, and it’s a little constricting because there are so few people I know who share my excitement for it. Maybe that’s a good thing. 

Or maybe someone from Roland Garros will read this post and get me a job as a sports writer. Who’s to say, really? 

Click HERE for the list.