Year-end Sports 2015 Europe and Africa Photo Gallery

LONDON (AP) Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic each won three of the four Grand Slam tennis titles in 2015, both coming agonizingly close to winning all of them in a calendar year.

Photographers from The Associated Press were present to capture those events, as well as many other successes and failures around the world of sports. In this series of year-end photos from Europe and Africa, the AP focuses on the creativity that our photographers bring to the events they cover.

In other major stories, New Zealand became the only team to successfully defend the Rugby World Cup; Lewis Hamilton comfortably won his third Formula One title; just as comfortable was Chris Froome's second Tour de France victory; Barcelona claimed yet another Champions League; Jordan Spieth won two of golf's majors and came close in the other two.

Away from the field of play, Sepp Blatter appears to have finally been taken down.

Besides the top events, the AP also covers sports at less glamorous locations, such as horse racing in Chad, cliff diving in Bosnia and golf in a township near Johannesburg. More breathtaking images come from ski Jumping in Sweden and Austria, dog sled racing in Germany and diving in Russia.