{"id":224168,"date":"2025-10-25T06:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T06:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224168\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T06:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T06:25:11","slug":"mirra-andreeva-denied-wta-finals-debut-after-visa-drama-as-elena-rybakina-swoops-in-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224168\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirra Andreeva denied WTA Finals debut after ‘visa’ drama as Elena Rybakina swoops in | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teenage sensation Mirra Andreeva<\/a> will not make her WTA Finals debut this year despite enjoying an impressive start to the season, which saw her win back-to-back WTA 1000 titles in Dubai and Indian Wells. Andreeva and Elena Rybakina<\/a> were locked in battle for the final spot at the season-ending championships.<\/p>\n

Only the eight players who have earned the most ranking points in a single season make it into the WTA Finals in Riyadh. However, Andreeva was not able to control her fate this week. She was expected to take a late wildcard into the WTA 500 event in Tokyo to earn some extra points, but she reportedly could not get a visa to compete.<\/a><\/p>\n

In her absence, Rybakina has sealed WTA Finals qualification in dramatic fashion, getting revenge over Victoria Mboko in Friday\u2019s Tokyo quarter-finals. This was the last possible week in which Rybakina could play for a place in the year-end tournament, and she got the job done.<\/p>\n

Just a few weeks ago, it seemed that the 2022 Wimbledon<\/a> champion would need to make a monumental effort to make it to Riyadh. But she accepted the challenge, reaching the quarter-finals of the WTA 1000 event in Wuhan before lifting the Ningo Open trophy last week.<\/p>\n

Once it emerged that Andreeva wouldn\u2019t be playing the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, Rybakina had one final task on her hands – reach the semi-finals this week to secure her spot at the WTA Finals. And she did just that, avenging two tough losses in the process.<\/p>\n

The world No. 7 suffered a bruising three-set defeat to Leylah Fernandez in the Washington semi-finals over the summer, and she was stunned by teenage star Victoria Mboko in the Canadian Open semi-finals a few days later.<\/p>\n

But Rybakina dispatched Fernandez in her opening match in Tokyo this week, sealing a straightforward 6-4 6-3 victory. Then, in Friday\u2019s quarter-final, she defeated Mboko 6-3 7-6(4) to qualify for the WTA Finals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very difficult match against Victoria. The last time, it was the same battle. I’m very happy that today I managed to win in two sets,\u201d the 26-year-old said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the second set, we were going so close, both serving really well, so I’m glad that I could push a little bit more in the tiebreak and win in two sets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kazakh star joins Aryna Sabalenka<\/a>, Iga Swiatek<\/a>, Coco Gauff<\/a>, Amanda Anisimova, Jessica Pegula<\/a>, Madison Keys, and Jasmine Paolini in the star-studded field in Riyadh.<\/p>\n

This is the third year in a row in which Rybakina has qualified for the WTA Finals. But it comes at the expense of Andreeva, who racked up an impressive 4,319 points this season.<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old has suffered something of a dip in the latter part of the season, winning just five matches since Wimbledon<\/a>. And she was unable to take a wildcard into the Toray Pan Pacific Open this week to try and stop Rybakina from overtaking her points haul.<\/p>\n

WTA doubles star Ellen Perez recently took to social media to respond to a fan who questioned why Andreeva \u2018rescinded\u2019 her Tokyo wildcard. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t have the visa to play in Tokyo,\u201d Perez revealed.<\/p>\n

Andreeva will now be the first alternate at the WTA Finals, while Ekaterina Alexandrova will be the second alternate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teenage sensation Mirra Andreeva will not make her WTA Finals debut this year despite enjoying an impressive start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[6961,8233,101,118,872,95585,56,54,55,87316,11572],"class_list":["post-224168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-elena-rybakina","tag-mirra-andreeva","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news","tag-toray-pan-pacific-open","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wta-finals","tag-wta-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}