\n\tRIYADH: The WTA Finals return this week to Riyadh, where the eight top-ranked female tennis players on the tour will do battle one last time this season.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis is the second straight year the Saudi capital has hosted the event, which runs from Nov. 1 to 8 at King Saud University Indoor Arena. The players in the singles event are split into two groups of four who will face each other in a round-robin stage, with the top two in each group advancing to the semi-finals on Friday.<\/p>\n
\n\tAryna Sabalenka is the top seed and headlines Group Steffi Graf, alongside defending champion Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula, and Jasmine Paolini. No. 2 seed Iga Swiatek is joined in Group Serena Williams by Amanda Anisimova, Elena Rybakina and Madison Keys.<\/p>\n
\n\tSeven of the eight players spoke to the press on Friday; Paolini opted to skip her media duties, citing illness. This is the second consecutive season in which the Italian has qualified for both the singles and doubles at the event.<\/p>\n
\n\tHere are the main talking points ahead of this year\u2019s season finale.<\/p>\n
\n\tSabalenka chasing a maiden Finals crown<\/p>\n
\n\tThe closest Sabalenka has come to winning the WTA Finals title in her previous four appearances was in 2022, when she finished runner-up to Caroline Garcia in Fort Worth, Texas.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis year, she arrives in Riyadh on the back of an impressive campaign during which she reached eight finals and won four of them, including a fourth Grand Slam trophy at the US Open.<\/p>\n
\n\tShe spent the past two weeks practicing in Dubai in preparation for the season-closer, and has spoken at length about the lessons she learned from her losses this year in the finals of the Australian Open and Roland-Garros, at the latter of which she succumbed to her emotions and frustration. Vindication came at the US Open, and she says she now adopts a calmer approach to big matches.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen you just lose control completely, it\u2019s not going to help you,\u201d she said on Friday ahead of her opening match on Sunday against Paolini. \u201cI think that was my main lesson: no matter what, stay in control.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHaving those finals, having that experience, definitely helped me to stay in control at the US Open. Every time I would remember those two matches, I was like, \u2018OK, there is no chance I\u2019m going to lose control over my emotions this time.\u2019 That experience really helped me in that final at the US Open.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSabalenka secured the year-end No.1 ranking for a second-consecutive year and is hoping she can finally unlock the WTA Finals puzzle.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think before, I was thinking too much about the round-robin matches,\u201d she said. \u201cI would win a couple of matches, then it was really tricky for me to play full in the third one knowing I was most likely going to qualify for the semis. That was tricky.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think the goal is just to completely forget about the round-robin and just play like a tournament, like every match matters and you have to go and fight and not waste your energy of, like, thinking, counting, doing this math situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSwiatek back on solid ground<\/p>\n
\n\tIt has also been a season of learning for Swiatek, who had to deal with the emotional aftermath of a positive drug test as a result of taking a contaminated sleeping aid. The Polish world No. 2 was cleared of wrongdoing and served a one-month suspension, but the ordeal took a toll on her and affected her mindset and results.<\/p>\n
\n\tWith the help of coach Wim Fissette, with whom she started to work toward the end of last season, Swiatek made significant improvements to her serve and to her game on faster surfaces, which finally paid off during the summer.<\/p>\n
\n\tPlaying on her least favorite surface, she captured a sixth Grand Slam at Wimbledon, and added more silverware to her trophy room on the hard courts of Cincinnati and Seoul.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI had some challenges this year that really were kind of new and I needed to adjust to them a little bit more,\u201d said the 24-year-old.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAlso I think it was the first year when I didn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m still young. That was also a different feeling. Overall, I think winning Wimbledon made this season already super special and amazing. I would just put it over anything else, I would say. It was a tricky season but at the end I can say a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSwiatek is making her fifth consecutive appearance at the WTA Finals and will begins her campaign on Saturday against Australian Open champion Keys.<\/p>\n
\n\tGauff eyes a repeat<\/p>\n
\n\tNo player has successfully defended a WTA Finals title since Serena Williams completed a \u201cthreepeat\u201d in 2014.<\/p>\n
\n\tGauff hopes to change that this week. The reigning Roland-Garros champion beat the world\u2019s top two, Sabalenka and Swiatek, en route to lifting the trophy in the Kingdom last year, and will face stiff competition again this year in her attempt to retain the crown.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe 21-year-old built some much-needed momentum by reaching the semi-finals in Beijing and winning the WTA 1000 tournament in Wuhan in the past few weeks, and can rely on her experience of playing well at Riyadh\u2019s altitude 12 months ago.<\/p>\n
\n\tAsked why she thinks there have been no repeat champions at the event for more than a decade, Gauff said: \u201cI think, (a) it\u2019s one of those tournaments you\u2019re not guaranteed a spot in every year. Some people win and aren\u2019t able to even qualify. And (b) It\u2019s the top eight in the world; it\u2019s very hard to win this tournament in general, let alone replicate it in back-to-back years.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cBut yeah, I\u2019m not thinking about that. I really just want to focus on my first match ahead and take it one match at a time. I think that\u2019s what I did last year; going to try to keep that mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAmericans form half the field<\/p>\n
\n\tOf the eight players competing in the singles, four are American, the first time there has been this many since 2002. They are Anisimova, the only event debutante in the field, Gauff, Keys and Pegula.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s crazy that half of us are Americans,\u201d said Anisimova, who reached the Wimbledon and US Open finals this season.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s super exciting for US tennis. I mean, we\u2019ve done really well this year. I\u2019m just really proud of myself and the other girls. Yeah, hopefully we can keep going. Definitely makes us represent our country well. I think we\u2019re doing a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRybakina ready for \u2018one last push\u2019<\/p>\n
\n\tIn a season in which she played without her coach, Stefano Vukov, as he served a suspension for breaking the WTA Code of Conduct, Rybakina punched her ticket to the WTA Finals at the last possible moment by winning the title in Ningbo and reaching the semi-finals in Tokyo in the last two weeks.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOf course, it\u2019s a great result because when I came to Asia, I knew, of course, there is still a lot of players who can qualify,\u201d said Rybakina, who will face Anisimova in her opener on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThen with just the last few tournaments left, of course I knew that I needed to win a lot of matches in a row. You never know what\u2019s going to happen each day. I tried to do my best. I played against tough opponents, ones I lost to before. I\u2019m pretty glad that the last few weeks went successful for me. Happy to be here. Ready to make last push this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe former Wimbledon champion has changed her management set-up, forming her own company to represent her, and she said she feels more in control of her career.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not always easy to find good people to set up the team,\u201d she said. \u201cI had experiences with agencies. Since I\u2019ve been on the tour for quite a while, I understand what I need for myself in the future. This is what I\u2019m trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIYADH: The WTA Finals return this week to Riyadh, where the eight top-ranked female tennis players on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-237493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237493","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=237493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}