Texas racquet massacre

Mexico is hosting the Guadalajara Open Akron, a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) 1000 tournament with a prize pool of $2.5 million, which will reveal the eight tennis players who made it to the WTA Finals in Fort Worth, Texas. This year, at the end of the women’s season, a unique situation has developed: about 15 people are claiming five places that are still free in the list of participants in the final tournament. Among them are three Russians – Daria Kasatkina, who has a good opportunity to play there, Veronika Kudermetova, who will have to work hard to solve this problem, and Lyudmila Samsonova, who retains only theoretical chances to play at the WTA Finals.

The end of the current WTA season was marked by the highest level of competition in the struggle for the right to play in the WTA Finals, the final tournament, which was chosen to take place in the Texas city of Fort Worth in early September. At the moment, only three participants in this competition are known – the first racket of the world Iga Swiatek from Poland, Ons Zhaber from Tunisia and American Jessica Pegula. But further the situation is not very definite. The passing score in Fort Worth is 3105 points. American Coco Gauff scored 3082 points this year, Belarusian Arina Sobolenko – 2970, Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia – 2896, Russian Daria Kasatkina – 2885, Romanian Simona Halep – 2661 points. However, Halep finished the season ahead of schedule, so the eighth at the WTA Finals is Russian Veronika Kudermetova, who has 2606 points. At the same time, Kudermetova, in order to guarantee herself a ticket to Fort Worth, regardless of the results of other tennis players, needs to reach the final in Mexico, and Kasatkina, who met with Chinese Zhu Lin early this morning Moscow time, to the semifinals.

In addition to the five listed above, before the start of yesterday’s game day in Guadalajara, eleven more athletes had chances to play in the final tournament, including Russian Lyudmila Samsonova, who had already reached the second round in Mexico. True, it will be very difficult for her. Samsonova will get to Fort Worth only if she herself takes the title at Guadalajara Open Akron and wins 900 championship points, and most of her competitors lose in the early stages. But Belinda Bencic, who just recently started training under the guidance of Russian coach Dmitry Tursunov, who has completed cooperation with British Emma Radukanu, may well count on a place in the top eight. The Swiss Olympic champion Tokyo currently has 2,365 points and, with luck for herself, can get ahead of Kudermetova if she reaches the semi-finals, that is, she wins three more matches. And, for example, the Czech Petra Kvitova, who was also in the second round on Monday evening, faces another, more difficult minimum task – she needs to reach the final.

Such an acute situation in the top twenty of the world ranking has developed for quite understandable reasons. This year is marked by the undisputed dominance of Šwiętek, who has won eight major titles. The Polka has won two of the three Grand Slams that have scored points this season and four of the eight 1000 events. Not surprisingly, Šwiętek has amassed 10,335 points since January, about the same as her next three pursuers – Gill (4555), Pegula (3417) and Gauff. That is, there are not so many rating points left for the rest of the tennis players, especially since the number of WTA “points” tournaments (54) due to another cancellation of the Chinese series this year is small.

Yesterday, following the results of the morning matches held in Guadalajara, Brazil’s Beatriz Addad Maya dropped out of the Texas race, losing in two games to Czech Katerina Sinyakova. But Elena Ostapenko from Latvia easily beat the American Lauren Davis and still has a theoretical chance to break into Fort Worth.

Evgeny Fedyakov