If you’d like to follow our new tennis coverage, click here.
At some point, the WTA Finals will once again become a fully formed signature stop on the professional women’s tennis tour.
The tour will travel to a fixed location year after year (a big push from Saudi Arabia) rather than one-off destinations cobbled together at the last minute — like Cancun, Mexico, where this year’s event will be held less than two months ago Selected.
There may be effective coordination with the International Tennis Federation, so the top players (Iga Swiatek, Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff) feel no need to compete in this event with the Billie Jean Gold Cup The choice between the top national team competitions that opens the ocean comes less than 48 hours before the last game of the final, away to Sevilla in Spain.
The championship might even become less random, going back to the days when Serena Williams won the event every year, giving the Finals’ reputation an extra layer of clout.
While multiple Grand Slam winners like Swiatek may win their first title this year, for now, the Elite’s existence is somewhat of a metaphor for the state of women’s tennis itself. There is so much hope and possibility here, so much quality and diversity, but it has been hampered of late by bad luck, questionable decision-making and the career-stymieing of some of the sport’s biggest stars.
Industry insiders say these factors make preparations for the PGA Tour event – which begins Sunday with only the top eight players and doubles teams that year – more challenging than the men’s tour’s season-ending The game is played the same way.
“Tennis fans will go to the big events, but if you don’t give people the opportunity, the time to prepare, then you can’t do anything about it,” said Ken Solomon, chief executive of the Tennis Channel, the tournament’s U.S. television partner. Tired of showing games to empty stands. “It’s fundamental and it’s not just the ending. “It’s an ongoing challenge on the Tour. “
Steve Simon, chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, said in an interview on Friday that the tour was excited to land in a temporary 4,000-seat stadium next to the turquoise waters of the Yucatan Peninsula, but it was certain Not where he expected it to be. He said the organization had four months to find a site and did not want to rush into a long-term deal.
“WTA tennis is very popular in Latin America and Mexico,” he said. “It’s going to be a really good atmosphere because all of our events will be held here.”
Pegula coach David Witt said everyone wants a good crowd and that “can really help the players. Last year, the crowd wasn’t the biggest,” Witt said of the Fort Worth, Texas, event said when attendance numbers were disappointing.
Time will tell. Earlier this week, there were plenty of seats left at Paradisus Stadium, with tickets starting at about $70.
The WTA Finals has encountered some uncontrollable circumstances recently.
The WTA Tour canceled the 2020 finals due to a pandemic and moved the 2021 finals to Guadalajara, Mexico, as China, which was scheduled to host the 10-year tournament in Shenzhen, did not allow anyone to enter the country.
Later, after former doubles star Peng Shuai accused a former Chinese government official of sexually assaulting her on social media, Simon announced that the WTA would suspend operations in China until the Chinese government investigated and allowed direct contact with Peng Shuai.
That failed, and the WTA moved the 2022 Finals to Fort Worth, Texas. But even as the WTA ended its unsuccessful boycott and resumed operations in China, the Chinese effectively terminated the agreement for the Tour Finals. In September, the WTA announced another one-year deal.
Simon said the organization is finalizing a multi-year deal for the event, which he hopes to announce by the end of the year so the game can return to something close to “normal.”
“Certainly we haven’t seen this in a while,” he said.
Beyond the pandemic and geopolitical factors, women’s tennis has lost some of its biggest stars permanently or to career changes in recent years.
In addition to the epic career end of Serena Williams, popular Australian player Ash Barty retired at the age of 25 last year after being ranked number one. World-class star and four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, who won the U.S. Open in 2018 and gave birth to her first child, said she suffered a “long period of depression” and had little to no play in the past three seasons. Participated in competitions. Canada’s Bianca Andreescu was another rising star who won the U.S. Open in 2019 at the age of 19, but she continued to suffer injuries.
With the WTA Finals offering a whopping $9m (£7.4m) in prize money, the burden of filling the void and selling tickets falls on the shoulders of a new generation of standout players, namely 19-year-old Gauff. American superstar who won her first Grand Slam at the US Open in September 2019.
As Goff headed to the airport to catch a flight to Cancun earlier this week, Goff’s associate coach Brad Gilbert quickly went over what makes the Tour Finals different from every other event. This is his first WTA Finals appearance as a coach, but he has attended three ATP finals at Madison Square Garden and coached Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick to the event on multiple occasions.
He said the event, which saw players split into two groups of four in a round-robin format with the top two in each group advancing to the semi-finals, was a success and required some cerebral acrobatics after a year of failure. Cancel the game again.
Reaching the finals is the first goal for any player. Reaching this goal is a huge reward for a year of persistence. But newbies may feel satisfied with making it to the Elites and not be fully prepared for a tournament without any cupcake competition. When Gauff participated in this event for the first time last year, she achieved 0 wins and 3 losses in both singles and doubles.
Additionally, Gilbert said, it’s better to go into the finals like a single-elimination tournament because players who lose their first game tend to be in trouble. But when a loss occurs, the game becomes the ultimate test of any player’s most important qualities: a short memory and the ability to move quickly from a bad point, set or game. The reset time was not a week, not even two weeks, but less than 48 hours.
“When you succeed the second time, you usually have a different mindset,” Gilbert added.
This is where Pegula finds herself. Pegula was exhausted in her final debut last year after playing more than 100 singles and doubles matches in a season. As she said in an interview Thursday, “It’s empty.”
Part of her was just happy to be there. Then she got sick and lost all six games, ending her best season ever in a brutal and strange way. Tennis players typically lose only once a week, or twice if they are playing doubles at the same time.
This year, she built recovery before the finals into her schedule. “I’m ready and want to win,” she said.
Pegula, the world’s No. 1 player in doubles and No. 5 in singles, is the kind of player who thrives in an event that often involves more than just crowning the world’s top players. France’s Caroline Garcia won last year at the end of Swiatek’s dominant season. Garbine Muguruza won the title in 2021 after failing to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam all year. She has since gone 12-21 and has been on self-imposed rest since February.
Dominika Cibulkova won the title in 2017. The following year, Caroline Wozniacki, who had yet to win her only Grand Slam title, won the event.
Germany’s Andrea Petkovic, who retired earlier this year from a job in the TV studio and coaching box, said tournaments were often less about who was the best player and more about who had more juice left in the tank. Has the most oil. Therefore, a season as dominant as Swiatek’s in 2022 could be a disadvantage.
Swiatek played 72 singles matches before the final last year, winning 37 consecutive games in a single match, and also won two Grand Slam titles. She suffered a setback in the semifinals against Belarusian Sabalenka, who had only played 54 games.
“I’m looking for someone who hasn’t spent all their eggs yet,” Petkovic said.
Witt said Pegula was a victim of her success last year, unexpectedly winning five races and taking the title at high altitude in Guadalajara in mid-October.
“You want to be fiery and set the tone,” Witt said.
Petkovic is actually optimistic about Swiatek’s chances this year. Swiatek has played 75 matches and lost the No. 1 ranking to Sabalenka, but her schedule has been relatively light over the past two months.
She lost in the fourth round of the U.S. Open, then played just two matches at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo before winning five in a row to enter the China Open in Beijing on October 8. She has not competed since.
(Above: Last year’s winner, Caroline Garcia. Caitlin Mulcahy/Getty Images)