• Beth Tweddle has no place on woman-free shortlist
• In pictures: the 10-man shortlist

The winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award next month will be a man after a 10-person shortlist was named on Monday night which featured no women.

The list was drawn up in time-honoured fashion by the editors of 30 publications in the regional and national press and magazines. “It’s not our decision,” a BBC spokeswoman said.

It meant Beth Tweddle, winner of a third successive European championship on the bars, and Sarah Stevenson, the taekwondo fighter crowned world champion this year, will go unrecognised by the BBC.

Instead the boxer Amir Khan and the world No4 tennis player Andy Murray, whose years were not distinguished by significant title victories, took the places of British sportswomen in the year before the Olympic Games come to London.

The list further comprises the Ashes-winning opening batsmen Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, the athletics world champions Mo Farah and Dai Greene, the golfers Rory McIlroy, Darren Clarke and Luke Donald along with the cyclist Mark Cavendish.

Andy Murray has banished the idea of using sports psychologists again, MurraysWorld.com can exclusively reveal.

Many have raised the question of whether he could benefit from a sports psychologist. However, Murray hired one in the earlier, more mentally frail part of his career, and has opened up about his disdain for using them.

Murray lamented: “I used sports psychologists when I was younger and all of them used to say the same thing.”

“Sometimes you need something different for the situation. You can’t always just say: “Breathe, count to 10.” I find it more beneficial talking to people who have played a sport at the top level.”

There were dou…

Swiss shows his survival instinct as the rest of game’s elite limp, ache and moan through the season’s last hurrah

We live, it is said, in the golden age of tennis. The final tournament of the year, which reached its climax in London on Sunday night, was meant to be a celebration of that excellence. Why, then, did it more closely resemble a field hospital?

The Association of Tennis Professionals – that curious accommodation between management and labour that works almost despite itself, sport’s equivalent of a post-war northern Co-op – brings the eight best players in the world to the banks of the Thames each November to fight for a prize of £1m in the one tournament that is its own property. It is a contract that runs until 2013 and, when the ATP sits down to allocate the next venue, bidding will be fierce.

The players who make it to this golden finishing line, clearly, do not lack for motivation. And, for millionaires, it is not just the money. They want bragging rights, locker-room credibility, respect. When their work is done, these elite athletes with temperamental bodies and minds retire to their warm-weather havens and prepare for the start of another season.

Again the World Tour Finals, sponsored enthusiastically by Barclays, is a daily sell-out, a well-run tournament in a spectacular setting lovingly embraced by not one British television provider but two.

What could be more perfect?

Rarely has the sport been blessed with such wonderful talent operating near capacity, providing fans with a rolling narrative of intense rivalry from January to Christmas as Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray engage in a personal battle of wills and sinew, all the while looking out for the challenges of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Tomas Berdych, Mardy Fish and Janko Tipsarevic, the other players in the final act, and a swath of younger, rising aspirants.

Yet tennis is red-lining. There is too much of it, at least for the elite players, and it will not change without pain. The 2012 season has been shortened by two weeks but the contraction means the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris will now be rammed up directly against London, with barely enough time for the finalists to catch the Eurostar and get to the practice courts of the O₂ Arena.

Pleasing sponsors, television, tournament organisers, players and public seems an intractable conundrum. Next year there is the complication of the Olympics, when tennis returns to Wimbledon three weeks after the All-England Championships. There is always the Davis Cup, of course, and that unwieldy, nostalgic beast roams the planet eating up recuperation time virtually without pause. Suggestions that it be compressed into a two-week tournament have been rejected in the past and, until the crisis worsens to the point of revolt, will continue to be ignored.

It is the players who should decide. They are the entertainers. They generate the crowds and the revenue, not administrators and TV suits. They have it in their power to make a statement. What they need is the will and the leadership. But they suffer from greed, too. Not many of them will turn down lucrative invitations to exhibition tournaments, while simultaneously whingeing about the physical and mental loads they have to bear.

All but one of the combatants in Greenwich has limped in and out of post-match press conferences since last Sunday to complain, with varying degrees of subtlety and conviction, about chronic and fleeting aches and pains, from groin to brain, that have hampered their performance and commitment. Nearly all of them have looked shattered, none more so than Murray, who arrived with three recent titles and high hopes – as well as a strained groin, a sore elbow, a tight hamstring, a curiously sore right buttock and a frazzled spirit.

Murray gave up the fight after losing to David Ferrer in his first match – and his No3 world ranking to Federer. The others struggled through. They did not have the sheen of champions. They had the pallor of prisoners. But it is in their gift to escape. They are not slaves.

This is the warfare of modern tennis. For all but the winner the O₂ Arena is their Waterloo. Only the 30-year-old Federer, the oldest player left standing after a week of occasionally outstanding but largely uneven tennis, seems capable of consistently handling the rigours of his calling.

The Swiss, a master of insouciance as well as the court, sees less cause to complain about the schedule than Nadal, Murray and others, who contemplated strike action after the US Open. Talk of insurrection appalled the essentially conservative and self-sufficient Federer. He says it is about sensible schedule management. And he is right, although he is not looking at the wider picture. Federer has the luxury, as a senior player, to pick and choose his fights more selectively.

He timed his charge here perfectly, ignoring Asia and returning after a decent rest to pick over the bones of his weary foes in Basel and Paris. He was short of his best yet irresistible, not so much a seasonal new-born king but a reborn one, an old-fashioned survivor in an inflexible modern playground of sport.

• Spain’s world No5 beats Djokovic 6-3, 6-1
• Thomas Berdych sees off Tipsarevic in three

David Ferrer, having seen off Andy Murray in straight sets on Monday afternoon, did the same to the world No1 Novak Djokovic in the ATP World Tour Finals on Wednesday night, and follows Roger Federer into the semi‑finals of this most turbulent of season-ending tournament.

Djokovic described his fifth defeat of the year as “the worst”. He paid tribute to Ferrer, but said: “Maybe it’s because of the length of the season, maybe it’s just because I’m not feeling well.” Federer is the fittest and best player left in the field. History revisited.

The sponsor, Barclays, might have mixed feelings but the fans who have packed out the O2 Arena at every session of the ATP World Tour Finals are loving it, regardless of allegiance. This is tennis – top-level sport, in fact – as it should be, full of uncertainties and edge, with grit beating genius, tired muscles succumbing to the commitment of the underdog.

The Spaniard, ludicrously ignored in most discussions despite his No5 world ranking, beat Djokovic convincingly 6-3, 6-1 in an hour and a quarter, stunning the Serb and his many fans among the 17,500 present. He deserved it. Ferrer was as intense as Djokovic was distracted.

If his wounded right shoulder was troubling him, Djokovic did not betray the inconvenience during play, although his error count was horrendously high by his standards, 17 in the first set, 33 overall. Ferrer’s serve was razor-sharp all night – 86% in the first set – and Djokovic could not find the consistency to resist an inspired opponent. He plays his compatriot Janko Tipsarevic on Friday night.

Tipsarevic earlier came so close to beating Tomas Berdych when substituting for Murray, who withdrew with a groin strain on Tuesday after losing in straight sets to Ferrer. He blew match-point in the tie-break, then fell awkwardly, hurting a knee, on the final point to lose 2-6, 6-3, 7-6.

Tipsarevic caused mild embarrassment for Murray when he contradicted his version of their practice session on Sunday, 24 hours before he lost to Ferrer, before withdrawing from the tournament on Tuesday. Murray had said he “played some points” and “didn’t feel good, stopped the practice early … I knew in my head I wasn’t ready to play and wasn’t right to play”.

Tipsarevic, however, said they had played for “one hour and 10 minutes”. He said: “We had a long warm-up. One set. After the set, we stopped … But I … honestly never saw that he had any kind of problems on court.”

At the same time, Tipsarevic also said he could see that Murray “wasn’t feeling great”, observing that “some times players feel tired, whatever”.

What does it all prove? That elite athletes are finely tuned machines with their own priorities, and it underlines the minuscule margins between fitness and ill-health at the highest level.

Tipsarevic, in any case, had reason to be grateful to Murray for his opportunity here and the world No9 looked to be making the most of it until he blundered at the very end of an enthralling match against Berdych. He breathed heavily, and served a double-fault to hand back the initiative.

Berdych walloped a big serve wide, Tipsarevic fell awkwardly as he stretched to get the ball back and his opponent had merely to dink it into open space for the win – as his opponent should have done three shots earlier. Murray’s injury replacement nursed a throbbing knee as he limped off court and prepares now for Djokovic on Friday. Berdych plays Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

The irony was, Tipsarevic had played the more sensible tennis for most of the two hours and 26 minutes it lasted, Berdych’s 34 unforced errors exceeding his by 13 and it was two ill-judged forehands, one long, one short, by Berdych that gave Tipsarevic that match point. But he blew it.

Would Murray have done so? Unlikely.

Last week Andy Murray found himself in an old raggedy building in East London that once acted as the electricity generating station for the Shoreditch Tram system.

Adidas were responsible – they had challenged Murray to learn Road Tennis in just one hour and then take on Sylvain "Lama" Barnettone, one of the world's best players of the sport.

The video of the event was released today and you can read our behind the scenes report here.

Adidas say this is the start of many such videos to come from the brand, "The event marked the start of our new campaign, where we’ll be challenging some of the world’s …

• Murray suffering with groin injury picked up in training
• ‘I was doing more damage playing with an injury’

Andy Murray leaves the last tournament of the season on one good leg, a disappointed and chastened man. A groin strain will not do lasting damage but ignoring it may have taught him a lesson that will determine at least the immediate management of his career.

Three months ago he complained that the physical demands of the tour weighed too heavily on players who consistently go deep in big tournaments. On Tuesday, he provided the proof of that assertion. Simultaneously, however, he confessed he had ignored his better instincts by playing in the ATP World Tour Finals here in Greenwich.

Against sound medical advice, Murray decided to risk aggravating an injury he has never had before, one he collected recently – to go with niggles in a buttock, an elbow and a hamstring he had acquired in the previous few weeks, not to mention the mental anguish that accompanies him everywhere.

Murray has an excellent record of completing tournaments and did not want to disappoint the organisers, the fans or himself. This is probably not a mistake he will repeat. He always had one eye on the Australian Open, which starts in mid-January and at least now he can begin his rehab in good time. The muscle strain does not require surgery but it needs attention he could not give it while competing here. If it did not go in Greenwich, it might have gone in Melbourne.

The mental and physical strains manifested themselves in his ragged straight-sets loss to David Ferrer on Monday afternoon, only his second since the US Open. The disappointment was etched in his face 24 hours later when he succumbed to common sense and withdrew.

A tournament too far? Hardly. In all the agonising over burnout among modern players, the one argument conveniently ignored is the most obvious: they do not have to play if they do not want to. The consequences are loss of world rankings points and quite a lot of money but nobody is standing over them with a gun.

It is their collective drive that unites them. And Murray, who recently leap-frogged Roger Federer to No3 in the world rankings but may now slip back to fourth, is more driven than most. Frustration curdled with relief when he announced his decision.

“I never want to pull out of tournaments,” he said, “especially one of this size. But it’s a decision I had to make because I was probably going to do myself more damage. There’s no chance I would have been ready to win the tournament here. So, in hindsight, it was maybe the wrong decision [to play], but you also want to give yourself an opportunity.”

By coincidence he felt the groin go when hitting up with Janko Tipsarevic, the Serb who takes his place and will play Tomas Berdych on Wednesday. He will also face the world No1, Novak Djokovic, in the final round-robin match of his group on Friday.

On Tuesday, Murray was scheduled to hit at 1pm but cancelled the session and sat down with his team for two hours. They agreed he should pull out and head for his warm-weather training camp in Florida ahead of his Australian commitments. He also agreed this week to playing in the Brisbane Open in the new year, and hopes he can recuperate in the six or seven weeks he has left.

“That off-season is so important for me,” he said, “and has been for the last few years, getting myself in shape. It’s one of the few times when you can have an actual training block.”

What an anticlimactic end to his year, though. Murray was on form in Asia, where he won three tournaments on the spin. But a strained buttock forced him to pull out of Basel and Berdych beat him in a tight quarter-final in Paris. It was then that the doubts festered.

Murray returned from Paris on the Friday and a couple of days later, his body started to give up on him. He suspected the worst and hoped for the best.

When Murray, Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick raised concerns at the US Open about the schedule that makes life so tough for leading players on the tour, they were not drowned in sympathy. But this is how it unfolds, a gradual depletion of their physical resources.

“I was told to take a week to 10 days completely off,” Murray admitted. “Again, I couldn’t do that. So each day I was hitting up and down the middle of the court, not moving. You can get away with doing that. I played with the Bryan brothers on the Saturday. I felt OK. I went to do some serve movement work afterwards to test it out. I had to stop when I was doing that. Then on Sunday I played some points with Tipsarevic, and didn’t feel good, stopped the practice early. I knew in my head I wasn’t ready to play and wasn’t right to play.”

But play he did. Because that is what he wakes up in the morning for.

• Scot could decide after practice on Tuesday whether to pull out
• World No3 aggravated groin injury in loss to David Ferrer

Andy Murray is expected to decide after practice on Tuesday afternoon whether to pull out of the ATP World Tour Finals in London.

The world No3 picked up a groin injury in practice last week and struggled through a 6-4, 7-5 defeat by David Ferrer before revealing he was considering his future in the tournament.

Murray does not have to make a decision until just before the start of his second round-robin match against Tomas Berdych on Wednesday afternoon, but he will assess his condition in a practice session at the O2 Arena on Tuesday.

If the Scot feels the injury, which appeared to affect him particularly on his favoured backhand against Ferrer, is too inhibiting then he is likely to bring a premature end to his season and allow the Serb Janko Tipsarevic to take his place.

The round-robin format of the tournament means Murray can still reach the semi-finals despite Monday’s defeat, but he is now a firm outsider and will probably have to beat both Berdych and the world No1, Novak Djokovic, a tough task even if he was fully fit.

Murray, who has losing records against both players, is renowned for his reluctance to pull out of tournaments and the last time he withdrew midway through an event was in Dubai nearly three years ago.

• World No3 aggravates problem in his opening match
• Scot lost 6-4, 7-5 to dogged Spaniard David Ferrer

If Andy Murray’s season really is over, he is not leaving us clutching our sides. Nobody does gloom quite like Murray. Cut down by a gluteal injury in Basel and inconvenienced in defeat on Monday by the flare-up of a groin strain picked up in training after his exit in Paris a week and a half ago, he views his chances of continuing in the ATP World Tour Finals this week with all the Christmas cheer of Ebenezer Scrooge.

He may decide when he wakes up on Tuesday, he said. If not, he could leave it until a minute before his next scheduled match on Wednesday. Either way, he will not enter the O₂ Arena in a red suit on a sled singing Jingle All The Way.

It was the groin rather than the buttock that went on Monday, as the pugnacious David Ferrer – long considered (affectionately) a pain in the backside by his peers – beat him 6-4, 7-5, the first proper shock of the tournament. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal each dropped a set on the first day but won. Murray faces the prospect of spending the rest of the week in an ice bath with needles in his hip as his main rivals scrap over first prize-money of $1.6m (£1m) and end-of-year bragging rights. Federer may even reclaim the No3 ranking Murray took from him recently.

The Scot received courtside treatment between sets yet moved well enough in the concluding session. It was a frustrating, perplexing performance by Murray, of a piece with efforts when he is at a low ebb. His answers to gentle interrogation were mostly monosyllabic.

“Disappointing,” he said. “Didn’t feel great.” Asked about his body language, which approximated to that of Robespierre being led to the guillotine, he said: “Don’t know. I mean, I felt flat, in the second set especially. And, yeah, I don’t know, whatever … however I was feeling contributed towards that. Yeah, I don’t really know what else to say.”

He did say he would have pulled out before the start of the tournament had it not been this one, or one of the majors. For someone who rarely walks away from tough challenges, that was an admission that spoke loudly about the seriousness of his injury. And yet there is hope. As he pointed out, it is possible to go through with one early win – but highly unlikely.

This was Murray’s first setback against Ferrer on a hard court in six matches. Indeed the Spaniard had taken only one set from 12 in those encounters and Murray was considered odds-on to add to the 16 wins he had collected in 17 matches since the US Open. Only fleetingly did that look likely in the two hours the match lasted.

Ferrer is the Joe Frazier of tennis, favoured by fans of tenacity rather than those thunderstruck by glamour. Although he is ranked fifth in the world on merit, he suffers like the late Smokin’ Joe from the perception of his strengths: a refusal to contemplate lost causes and an uncluttered, muscular game that can unsettle more flamboyant opponents on his better days.

Monday was one of those days.

It was a glum one for Murray, who was disabused of any fleeting temptation to regard himself as Muhammad Ali in this little contest. He was a break up in each set but his concentration wavered as mistakes mounted between some exquisite shot-making, anomalies that puzzled his opponent.

Ferrer said he felt the power of Murray’s serve and added in halting English: “I think maybe he had a little problems, but not too many strong problems, no? Because he can play all the match.”

Murray is a wounded prisoner of the odds. If fit to continue, he probably needs two good wins from his remaining group matches to have any hope of reaching the semi-finals – or for Novak Djokovic’s right shoulder to fall off.

Ferrer thoroughly deserved his victory, in the last event of the season before they all go back to their warm-weather training camps and prepare for more well-paid punishment in the new year.

Adding not insult but at least hubris to injury, Federer took the arena microphone after Murray’s defeat to accept the Stefan Edberg sportsmanship and ATPWorldTour.com fans’ favourite awards, just a few days after damning the Scot with faint praise for winning three tournaments on a weakened Asian swing recently.

Murray had responded with dignity, saying he would let his tennis do the talking. On Monday that on-court conversation was muted. If the tennis gods had conspired to make this a black day for Murray, they could not have done much better.

A crowd of youngsters, journalists and PR workers are squeezed into the tiny foyer of a relatively unassuming, modest building in East London. In the main hall Andy Murray is playing road tennis with former WBA world heavyweight champion boxer David Haye.

It’s an easy game to understand. Put simply, it’s a smaller version of tennis played with a low net, a small, squidgy ball, and ping pong style rackets.

After waiting in the walkway for a few minutes, MW is led into the hall and takes a seat with members of the press behind the clan of excited youngsters. A group of cameramen film proceedings and it’s a relaxed scene. The only conflict going on is between Haye and his…