As the WTA Tour Finals round-robin stages progress, Aryna Sabalenka is one win away from securing the year-end No. 1 ranking after qualifying for the semifinals.
Sabalenka was drawn with Jasmine Paolini, Elena Rybakina and Zheng Qinwen in the group stage, which began on November 2 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
World No. 2 Iga Swiatek, looking to overhaul Sabalenka as world No. 1, was drawn to face Coco Gauff, against whom she has a 11-1 record, Jessica Pegula, who beat her in the U.S. Open quarterfinals, and Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova:
Sabalenka edged ahead 3-2 in her head to head with Paolini by winning 6-3, 7-5 Monday. After easing through the first set and going 4-2 up in the second, the result looked a formality, but Paolini battled back to 5-5 before Sabalenka’s pressure told. Sabalenka will face Rybakina Wednesday in search of the win that will see her end 2024 atop the WTA rankings, in a head to head she leads 6-3.
Rybakina thrashed the Belarusian in their most recent meeting on a hard court in the 2024 Brisbane final, but she had not played a competitive match since the first round of the U.S. Open before arriving in Saudi Arabia, withdrawing from numerous tournaments with injury and illness throughout the year. Her early results, including three titles and two finals, kept her in contention for the year-end event.
Though Rybakina lost her first two matches in Riyadh, Paolini triumphing 7-6(5), 6-4 before Zheng kept her hopes of qualification alive with a 7-6(4), 3-6, 6-1 win, she sees the tournament as an exercise in assessing her level and building up her match toughness.
Sabalenka and Zheng had most recently met in the Wuhan Open final, with Zheng breaking Sabalenka’s serve and winning a set against the Belarusian for the first time. Sabalenka won their three previous meetings, including the 2024 Australian Open final, without dropping a set or her serve, and repeated the trick in Riyadh by winning 6-3, 6-4.
In Swiatek’s first competitive outing with new coach Wim Fissette, she came back from a slow start to beat Krejcikova 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, taking control of the match as it went on. Gauff, who has shown renewed confidence on her forehand since splitting with coach Brad Gilbert — despite some shaky serving performances — was always in control of her opening match against compatriot Pegula, easing to victory 6-3, 6-2.
Pegula and Krejcikova play Tuesday in search of the win that will keep their qualification hopes alive, while Swiatek and Gauff face off for the first spot in the semifinals from their group.
In the orange group, the headline encounter is Swiatek facing Gauff, and the opportunity it provides the American to improve on a dreadful head-to-head record.
Swiatek has won 11 of 12 matches against Gauff, including in each of the last two years at this event. Swiatek will provide a lot of intrigue throughout in her first tournament with new coach Wim Fissette after splitting with her coach of three years Tomasz Wiktorowski earlier this month. She is also relatively fresh after missing the Asian swing, having raised issues with the tennis calendar in the latter part of the summer.
Wimbledon champion Krejcikova is the wildcard in the group, and in the tournament in general. Having qualified through winning a Grand Slam title rather than her form throughout the season, she could go on a hot streak as she did in London, or produce a more indifferent performance. Krejcikova did both against Swiatek in the opening match, capitalizing on a rusty start from her opponent to take the first set before coming off the boil as the match progressed.
Pegula, whose level is generally altogether more consistent and who is coming off the back of her debut Grand Slam final, is the final player in the orange group, but she had little answer to a supremely controlled performance from Gauff on Sunday.
The purple group started full of uncertainty outside of the world No. 1 Sabalenka, who is the favorite to win the whole event. Paolini had only played two events since exiting the U.S. Open at the last-16 stage, winning three matches in that time, while Rybakina hadn’t played at all since pulling out in New York with a lower back injury.
With Sabalenka winning her opening two matches and Rybakina losing hers, Zheng and Paolini are in a straight qualification shoot-out.
The eight players who qualified were split into four pots for the draw. Pot 1 is No. 1 and No. 2, Pot 2 is No. 3 and No. 4, and so on.
These seedings follow the players’ rankings in the ‘WTA Race,’ the table which only counts ranking points earned in 2024.
Each player then plays three round-robin matches. The top two players from each group contest the semifinals, with the winners meeting in the final.
This year, Barbora Krejcikova has qualified as the eighth player despite being No. 12 in the race. Krejcikova won Wimbledon, defeating Jasmine Paolini in the final, and a Grand Slam champion who finishes between No. 8 and N0. 20 in the race in the year that they won their title automatically qualifies for the event.
Iga Swiatek won the 2023 WTA Tour Finals in Cancun, Mexico, thrashing Pegula 6-1, 6-0 in the final. The current world No. 2 won all five of her matches last year, overhauling Aryna Sabalenka to end the year as world No. 1.
Swiatek is aiming to repeat the feat this year, after Sabalenka overtook her as world No. 1 on October 21.
The total prize money is $15.25million (£11.76m), which is a record for the event. Prize money is allocated per match win, and is structured so that the champion will take home $5.15m (£3.96m) if they go through the event undefeated with five wins (three round-robin wins, a semifinal win, and then victory in the final).
The winner of the final will receive $2.5m (£1.9m) while the winner of each semifinal will receive $1.27m (£978,000); the prize for a round-robin match win is $350,000 (£269,500) and each player receives $335,000 (£257,900) just for appearing at the event.
The prize pool is over $6million richer than the 2023 event in Cancun, and the prize for the winner is larger than any of the four Grand Slams, the largest of which is the U.S. Open at $3.6m (£2.77m).
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport and the Saudi Tennis Federation (STF) completed a three-year deal for the WTA Tour Finals in April this year. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) already sponsors the ATP and WTA world rankings, and this deal is currently the biggest element of the kingdom’s push into tennis. Saudi Arabia has designs on a coveted 1000-level tour event, but plans for that tournament have currently stalled on the most basic principles, including when it would be played and whether or not it would be a combined event, in which both ATP and WTA players play at the same venue in the same fortnight. It is not expected to come to any kind of fruition until at least 2027, if not 2028.
A deal was close in the summer of 2023, but the WTA backed down after prominent criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and treatment of women from prominent former players including Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. That left the WTA scrambling for a host city, eventually alighting on Cancun just two months before the event. This produced a tournament beset by bad weather and poor organization, played in front of a temporary 4,000-seat stadium on a court that players described as uneven and unpredictable. A longer term deal has the promise of stability for an event that has floundered since 2020, but has not stopped criticism of a country which criminalizes homosexuality and does not give women equal rights to men.
WTA chairman Steve Simon last year told that Saudi organizers are as “committed as we are to build and have good attendance for the event.”
In Riyadh, Simon’s replacement as chief executive Portia Archer said that the WTA Tour respects the values of the countries in which it hosts tournaments, saying she “misspoke” after initially stating that host countries need not necessarily have values that align with those of the WTA Tour.
With the contraction of the kingdom’s wider ambitions in tennis — its proposal for a Masters 1000 tournament and $1billion of investment last year set the sport aflame — this event is something of a mutual test exercise for the PIF and the WTA (and the ATP, which will be watching with interest). How the players feel, how well it is attended, and the response of the wider tennis world will all inform both sides’ strategies for more discussions on the future of the sport in the coming months.
Swiatek will likely have to repeat her 2023 performance and win all five matches: three round-robin ties, the semifinal, and the final.
If Sabalenka wins all three of her round-robin matches, then there is nothing Swiatek can do to return to the summit. If Swiatek loses once in the group stage, Sabalenka needs two wins out of three; if Swiatek loses twice, Sabalenka needs just one win.
If Sabalenka loses once in the group stage, she can still guarantee that she ends 2024 as world No. 1 by reaching the final of the event.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women’s Tennis
2024 The Athletic Media Company
