8 players to have successfully defended their ATP Finals title

#3 Lleyton Hewitt (Successfully defended his title once)

Lleyton Hewitt

2001 champion Lleyton Hewitt returned to the 2002 ATP Finals (then called the Tennis Masters Cup) in Shanghai.

Hewitt qualified for the semifinals behind group-winner Carlos Moya, where he beat tournament debutant and future 6-time winner Roger Federer in straight sets to set up a title showdown with Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero.

The reigning US champion burst out of the blocks, taking a two-set lead, only for Ferrero to fight back and force a fifth. Hewitt regrouped to triumph 7-5 7-5 2-6 2-6 6-4 in the deciding set, to become the first player in five years to successfully defend his ATP Finals title.

#4 Pete Sampras (Successfully defended his title once)

Pete Sampras

Pete Sampras is one of only four players in ATP Finals history to have won the tournament on at least five occasions.

Following his first two triumphs at the tournament (then called the ATP World Tour Championships) in 1991 and 1994 in Frankfurt, Sampras failed to reach the final the following year on both occasions - before winning a third ATP Finals title in 1996 Hanover (beat Boris Becker in the final).

In the 1997 edition of the tournament, Sampras dropped a group-stage match against Carlos Moya but topped his group in a 3-way tie with Moya and Patrick Rafter, on account of most sets won.

The then 3-time Wimbledon champion beat Swede Jonas Bjorkman in the semis and Moya's semifinal conqueror Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the final to successfully defend his ATP Finals title for the first time. It was Sampras's eighth title of the year.

In the process, Sampras became the first four-time winner at the tournament since Ivan Lendl and Ilie Năstase.