Iga Swiatek won the final WTA tournament and again became the first racket

The winner of the WTA Finals, which ended in the Mexican Cancun of the final tournament of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) with a prize fund of $9 million, was Iga Szwiatek from Poland. In the decisive match, which was postponed from Sunday to Monday due to rain, she gave only one game to American Jessica Pegula. This triumph allowed the 22-year-old tennis player to surpass Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka in the rankings and become the first racket of the world for the second year in a row.

The tournament in Cancun turned out to be exceptional in every way. Take the weather conditions, or rather the constant downpours, which forced the organizers to shake up the schedule every now and then. In the end, the finals had to be moved from Sunday to Monday, and the head of the WTA, Steve Simon, one of the most experienced and respected officials in the tennis establishment, openly admitted that the choice of the Mexican resort as the site of the prestigious competition was a serious mistake and promised to correct it.

But the main feature of this WTA Finals was still the purely sports component, primarily the victory of Iga Swiatek, which allowed her to take the title of first racket for the year from the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka in the final match of the season. Much, of course, was decided by the head-to-head meeting of these two tennis players, which took place in the semi-finals and ended in a convincing victory for the Polish tennis player – 6:3, 6:2. Having suffered a clear defeat in a fundamental situation, Sabalenka, who had previously lost to Jessica Pegula in the group stage, could only hope that the American, who showed excellent tennis in Cancun, would be able to stop Szwiatek. But it didn’t come to that. It took the Polish girl less than an hour to do everything. Without allowing Pegula to even really warm up, she crushed her – 6:1, 6:0.

In total, Swiatek won 23 games to zero this year, and no one has been able to win more than 20 sets in women’s tennis for two seasons in a row since the dominance of Steffi Graf and Monica Seles thirty years ago.

And in terms of the number of games in which no more than one game was lost (54), the Polish player achieved an outstanding result.

In general, the current season, of course, was marked by rivalry between Szwiatek, who finished it with a win-loss ratio of 68:11 and earned $9.8 million, and Sabalenka, whose similar figures were 55:14 and $8.4 million. For the most part, their confrontation , naturally, was in absentia, and of the three personal matches played from January to November, the Polish player retained two. After the US Open, where Swiatek lost to Elena Ostapenko from Latvia in the fourth round, it seemed that in terms of points she was too far behind the Belarusian, and then there was also a defeat from Veronika Kudermetova in the quarterfinals of the tournament in Tokyo. But a great finish – eleven matches won in a row and two prestigious titles in Beijing and Cancun – combined with the decline of Sabalenka, who, on the contrary, could not withstand the pressure and lost faith in herself, allowed Szwiatek to take the lead again.

She has won a total of six titles since January, including at Roland Garros. This is less than last year’s eight tournament victories, but there is still no room to talk about regression here. Still, the main goal has been achieved. Swiatek defended her leadership in the world rankings, which should be considered a great achievement for a still relatively young 22-year-old tennis player who finds it difficult to avoid changes.

And no one before her had managed to lose only 20 games during the entire final tournament, including the famous Serena Williams.

The triumph that 39-year-old Vera Zvonareva achieved in doubles with her 35-year-old partner, German Laura Siegemund, was also highly extraordinary. She belongs to a generation that seems to have passed away long ago, which is associated with the rise of Russian women’s tennis at the beginning of this century. Back in 2010, Zvonareva reached the finals of two Grand Slam singles tournaments and became the second racket of the world, and she played her first WTA tournament – the Kremlin Cup – ten years earlier, when she lost to Anna Kournikova in the second round. This is how the connection between times turns out.

Having entered the WTA Finals at the very last moment, Zvonareva and Siegemund won three meetings over the last two days. At the end of the group stage, their rivals were Pegula and Coco Gauff, who began the tournament as leaders in the pairs ranking with the same number of points, and in the semifinals – Australian Storm Hunter, who eventually took first place from the Americans at the end of the season, and Belgian Elise Mertens, who won last year’s WTA Finals with Russian Veronika Kudermetova. In the final, Zvonareva and Siegemund defeated American Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Australian Ellen Perez in two sets – 6:4, 6:4, and the Russian was the only participant in the match who never lost her serve, having played the maximum number of games on it – six.

Having won her 16th title as a couple, Zvonareva, who gave birth to a daughter in 2016 and then resumed her career, also became the oldest champion in the entire half-century history of the final tournament.

(Previously, the record belonged to the American girl Lisa Raymond, who won in 2011 at the age of 38.) And in terms of total age – 74 years – this champion couple at the WTA Finals has no equal. In the world rankings, Siegemund will rise from 9th place to 5th for the first time in her career, and Zvonareva, who was in 16th position, soared into the top ten and will finish the season 9th. For her, this is repeating her career high in doubles.

Evgeniy Fedyakov