The year-end finale for men's tennis brought another long season to a close and unquestionably there was a very high standard of play, with eight leading singles players - only Andy Roddick was missing through injury - competing to win a tournament whose name even the players had difficulty remembering.

Russian Nikolay Davydenko was the surprise winner, beating Juan Martin del Potro in a relatively low-key final that lacked the big names of recent years.

The ATP World Tour Finals as they are now known were previously the Masters Cup and before that simply the Masters.

Some of the participating players, who are always well-briefed before prize-giving ceremonies and unfailingly thank the tournament sponsors, the organisers, the line judges and the ballboys, on this occasion repeatedly forgot the name of this high-profile event during TV interviews.

Why does the ATP feel it needs to do chop and change the tournament's name when surely it knows that traditions only enhance a sport's reputation?

Say Wimbledon, say Roland Garros and every tennis fan will know exactly the subject matter. It is the same still when you mention "The Masters". Nobody needs a mouthful of new words to describe what already has a name, so why change it?

There is no reason to re-invent the wheel.

But perhaps that is the price we pay for corporate branding - it may resonate well in boardrooms but to the vast majority among the thousands who parked their bums on the seats in London this week it probably made no difference at all except add a bit of confusion.

And we haven't even mentioned the bizarre scoring system in the round robin when Del Potro didn't even know he'd reached the semi-finals.

Oh, and if you thought the mammoth tennis calendar was really over, we have the Davis Cup final this weekend. Then the season starts again in January ...