\n\tDUBAI: When an 18-year-old Coco Gauff qualified for her first WTA Finals in 2022, she lost all six matches she played across singles and doubles that week in Fort Worth, Texas.<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo years later in Riyadh, Gauff knocked out the world\u2019s top two, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, en route to the final, and overcame China\u2019s Zheng Qinwen in a gruelling three-hour title decider to be crowned WTA Finals champion.<\/p>\n
\n\tShe is the youngest to win the prestigious tournament since Maria Sharapova won it as a 17-year-old in 2004, and pocketed a record $4.8 million paycheck for her efforts.<\/p>\n
\n\tGauff will be back in Riyadh next month to defend her crown, having secured a fourth consecutive qualification for the WTA Finals.<\/p>\n
\n\tA constant presence in the world\u2019s top 10 for the past three years, Gauff takes pride in her consistency, and her relentless pursuit of greatness.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think it means a lot to me,\u201d Gauff told Arab News from the Wuhan Open this week.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think it just shows that I\u2019m definitely not falling behind and I want to continue to improve and get higher in the ranking points and do well.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cFor me, just qualifying for the finals, especially a bit early \u2014 I consider this early, not having to play the other tournaments, just feels great. This is a prestigious tournament, one that I always look forward to playing and being a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tGauff\u2019s journey since her 2022 finals debut has been anything but conventional. But those following the American\u2019s rise from teen prodigy to two-time Grand Slam champion would expect nothing less from a player who exploded onto the tour at the age of 15, declaring she wanted to be the greatest of all time.<\/p>\n
\n\tLooking back at her 0-6 run in Fort Worth, Gauff chuckles at the mere thought of it.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI remember I was so tired going into that tournament and I had never played that long into the season, and as grueling as a season before; and then like playing singles and doubles too,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen I lost my first match, I was like, OK, it\u2019s fine. I just had the goal to just win one match and it just didn\u2019t happen. And then honestly, right after that, I was like, well, to win this tournament, I have to do so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe next year at the finals\u2019 staging in Cancun, Gauff won two of her round-robin matches and reached the semifinals, before storming to the title in Riyadh 12 months later.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe WTA Finals is the first professional women\u2019s tennis tournament to take place in Saudi Arabia and is part of a wider initiative to promote the sport across the Kingdom, and encourage young girls to aspire to follow in the footsteps of the tour\u2019s biggest stars.<\/p>\n
\n\tNumerous community engagement activities have been staged alongside the finals, as well as throughout the year, and Gauff says a particular clinic was one of her favorite moments from her time in Riyadh last season.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe did an activation with the Special Olympics kids \u2014 Judy (Murray) ran it \u2014 which was really cool to do and meet those kids,\u201d said the world No. 3.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know, it just brought a little bit my inner child out again. I had a lot of fun doing the games and playing with the balloons. And my partner was super sweet and funny.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cSo I think for me that was the most fun that I had doing something and just seeing how happy the kids were just to have us come and expose them to tennis and other things. So I think that was my favorite memory.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAnd then obviously winning,\u201d she added with a smile.<\/p>\n
\n\tNext month\u2019s WTA Finals is the second of a three-year deal between the women\u2019s tour and the Saudi Tennis Federation to hold the elite-eight tournament in the Kingdom\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter a planned 10-year stay in Shenzhen was cut short due to the pandemic, the finals moved from Guadalajara to Fort Worth to Cancun between 2021 and 2023.<\/p>\n
\n\tRiyadh is the first stable home for the WTA Finals since Singapore (2014-2018) and Gauff was impressed by the turnout and fan engagement in year one.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think sport has the power to do a lot of things and bring people together,\u201d said the Floridian.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAnd I felt like the energy was there when I was inside the stadium, that everyone was enjoying the tennis and coming together. People from all nationalities attending, some Americans, Chinese, everyone coming. I didn\u2019t expect a lot of people to travel for the tournament, honestly. So, I was pretty impressed to see how many people came and I enjoyed the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Chinese fans who turned up for Zheng at the King Saud University Indoor Arena were one of the highlights of the week last year.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThey were really fun to play in front of. My final was like one of my favorite tennis atmospheres. I love the Chinese fans, even if they\u2019re not cheering for me, it\u2019s just, they bring that energy,\u201d Gauff said.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile the current deal between the WTA and the STF concludes in 2026, there could be benefits to extending the finals\u2019 stay in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe tournament is considered the crown jewel of the women\u2019s tour, and is a great way of promoting tennis by changing location every few years, taking the sport to different locations and introducing it to new markets.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut while moving around has its advantages, longer-term deals allow the tournament to build a lasting legacy in a specific location, and gather a robust audience year on year.<\/p>\n
\n\tAsked if extending the current agreement with Riyadh would be beneficial for the WTA Finals, Gauff said: \u201cI don\u2019t know. Because my last three finals, I\u2019ve been in three different places, I definitely don\u2019t think we should go to different places every year.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cNow, I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019ve been on a tour long enough to know like if 10 years is the right thing or not, because I\u2019ve played in three different years. And I definitely think that there\u2019s benefit to keeping a tournament there for at least two or three years in a row.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think that it builds a culture of that tournament in that area, which can bring more attention and also allow fans to, if they want to go to plan their trips and things \u2014 I think that was the issue with the two previous WTA Finals before last year\u2019s, it was announced pretty late. And I don\u2019t think that the turnout was great because of that. So I definitely think that there\u2019s benefit to having stability there.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI definitely think that for Riyadh, it was smart to just do three years, just to test the waters and see how it goes, considering that there was never a women\u2019s professional event there.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cBut from a player perspective, it definitely seemed like it was successful. I don\u2019t know how it was logistically and all that, but from my experience, it seems successful. So I wouldn\u2019t mind coming back in the future for longer than three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe WTA Finals will be staged from Nov. 1-8 at King Saud University Indoor Arena and will feature the top eight singles players and top eight doubles teams from the 2025 season.<\/p>\n
\n\tSix women have already booked their places in singles: Sabalenka, Swiatek, Amanda Anisimova, Madison Keys, Gauff and Jessica Pegula.<\/p>\n
\n\tThree women, Mirra Andreeva, Jasmine Paolini and Elena Rybakina are battling for the remaining two singles spots.<\/p>\n
\n\tA record $15,500,000 prize money is on offer, with an undefeated singles champion set to earn a whopping $5.235 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI: When an 18-year-old Coco Gauff qualified for her first WTA Finals in 2022, she lost all six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-209372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}