Twenty minutes after the final Cilic forehand had crashed into the net, the remnants of the night's crowd were still bulging in one corner of the O2 Arena. There was screaming and crying and hysterical wails of joy, and somewhere underneath it all there was also Novak Djokovic. He signed and signed away until his hand could sign no more. Once he collected his bags, he only made it metres into the halls of the stadium before he was cornered by a member of One Direction.

That 30 minutes was the most effort he had expended all day.

Two days, five breadsticks, a bagel tiebreak and a routine straight-setter.  The World Tour Finals has been billed melodramatically as the Final Showdown, but the ATP's flagship event is in danger of going down as the Final Beatdown for many of the players one week before they head to the beaches and the mountains.

Between them on Monday, Berdych and Cilic hit three groundstroke winners and 46 unforced errors, the latter figure very flatteringly recorded by the London statskeepers.

“It's (my) first time being here,” came Cilic's evaluation of his own beatdown. “Also I felt that Novak played really, really solid today.  In some matches, the score just keeps running.  You are sinking a lot.  You are always trying to find something.  But whatever you try, it's not working.”

In his post-match grilling, a reporter, so confused and bemused by the result, pleadingly asked Cilic to explain how on earth it is that a reigning US Open champion could fall 6-1 6-1 to a fellow professional tennis player.

Another question came in for the Croat. Was he “more angry, more sad, or more embarrassed” after he, all of six feet six inches and armed with a serve so unreturnable on his run to the US Open title, managed to trawl through an entire set without once holding serve?

Laughter accompanied both, but this was no laughing matter. There are times when such questions would bring about criticism and galvanize rolled eyes – not now.

After all, it absolutely is embarrassing, or it at least should be. But the unique format of the tournament somewhat guards against such strong feelings after the first match, irrespective of the scores. The fallen are considerably less affected with such losses, compared with regular knockout events, so acutely aware of the fact that there remains time to put things right again.

It's a different matter for the tournament, hwever. There is a tendency to label the most arbitrary and irrelevant things as good and bad for tennis. To fuss over a player daring to commit the apparent capital crime of spending 26 seconds between points rather than 25, or the presence of the five-minute pre-match warm-up for already warm athletes.

Each contest is split into its own session. When the matches actually do produce strong tennis, everything is rosy. However, this crowd was forced to watch the train wreck that was Berdych's groundstrokes flying wide, long, and everywhere in between. Wawrinka certainly played handily, but this was not the booming, vicious Wawrinka whose violently gorgeous shotm-aking left puddles of drool across the Melbourne grounds in 2014. January. He was smart and cunning, using angles and constantly varying the height, pace, and all the rest with his strokes. He played like a man fully deserving of winning the match, but not nearly by the score of 6-1 6-1 against a top-eight player.

“Unfortunately it was my worst match of the whole season,” came Berdych's assessment. “And I kept it for the start here in the World Tour Finals.  So that's not the best one at the start.”

Although Djokovic was in full, majestic flow, the evening crowd was then subjected to an equal parts hapless and hopeless performance from the US Open champion. Djokovic fans may be happy, but it's fair to say that many of the fans subjected to tennis' horrors of Monday November 10th 2014 probably aren't.