I have said it before: with no fewer than 10 Skyteam airlines flying TATL, anyone who can't find a reasonably convenient TATL routing is not looking hard enough.
There are some sizable gaps in ST coverage (e.g. try going from S. America to Oceania or from DAM/BEY/TLV to India), but that's not one of them!
As for the OP, there are a lot of direct flights simply because one of the points is a major hub...and has a lot of connecting traffic going through it...So maybe the awards seats went to people going to/from Argentina, India, Italy or wherever, and you're left with having to change planes somewhere...