The second-largest final WTA Elite Trophy tournament has started in China

The WTA Elite Trophy, the second most important final competition of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) with a prize fund of $2.4 million, has started in Zhuhai, China. Among its twelve participants there are three Russians – Lyudmila Samsonova, Veronika Kudermetova and Daria Kasatkina, each of whom has a chance finish the current season in the top ten of the world rankings.

The tournament, which began in Zhuhai, a city located in southern China near Macau, is unique in the sense that there is no similar competition for men. The idea of ​​identifying the strongest among the top twenty tennis players who did not make it to the main final competition, with the participation of the top 8, belongs exclusively to the WTA. The tournament formula is also not very typical for tennis. At the preliminary stage, 12 athletes are divided into four groups, and only their winners advance to the play-off stage, which consists of two semi-finals and a final. The WTA Elite Trophy took place for the first time in 2015. Before that, for six years in Bali and Sofia, the WTA held another minor final competition – the Tournament of Champions, but eight athletes competed there, selected according to special regulations.

The first winner of the WTA Elite Trophy was American Venus Williams. Then Czech Petra Kvitova, German Julia Görges, as well as two future first rackets of the world – Australian Ashleigh Barty and Belarusian Arina Sabalenka – became champions. After that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, which erased all Chinese tournaments from the professional tennis calendar for three years, there was a long pause in the history of the WTA Elite Trophy. Of the Russians, Elena Vesnina played twice in the 5,000-seat stadium built in a special economic zone on Hengqin Island, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Daria Kasatkina played once each, but none of them reached the semifinals. Now the Zhuhai dozen includes not only Kasatkina, who finds herself in the Azalea group with the Czech Barbora Krejcikova and Magda Linett from Poland, but also Lyudmila Samsonova and Veronika Kudermetova, who are opposed in the Rose group by the Chinese woman who received the wild card, the 37th racket in the world Zhu Lin. In addition, the Camellia group included American Madison Keys, Brazilian Beatrice Haddad Maya and French Caroline Garcia, and the Orchid group included Jelena Ostapenko from Latvia, Chinese Zheng Qingwen and Croatian Donna Vekic.

For Russian tennis players, the WTA Elite Trophy is of fundamental importance from the point of view of the fight for the title of the country’s first racket. In the classification, which takes into account points scored since January, they now stand very tightly: Samsonova is 15th (2545 points), Kudermetova is 16th (2460), Kasatkina is 17th (2410). Considering that after each group stage match the winner receives 80 points and the loser 40, Samsonova’s chances of retaining the lead are quite high, although things could still change. Still, for winning the tournament, depending on the number of matches won in the group, you can earn 700 or 660 points, and for reaching the finals – 440 or 400. Moreover, since Krejcikova, who closed the top ten, had 2775 points before the start, each of three Russian women are still vying to take a prestigious place in the top 10 at the end of the year.

However, for Kudermetova, solving this problem has become seriously more complicated. The fact is that on Tuesday she lost to Zhu Lin – 6:7 (5:7), 1:6, while Krejcikova beat Linette – 6:2, 6:4, and Haddad Maya defeated Keys – 6:4 , 6:4. After a spectacular triumph in early October at a major tournament in Tokyo, Kudermetova clearly lost confidence. In the first game she led 5:3, but gave up the next two games, failing to convert a set point on someone else’s serve when the score was 5:4, and then made a mistake at the end of the tiebreaker. After this, the Russian made mistakes one after another. It is not surprising that the Chinese player, who needed a painkiller tablet and the help of a massage therapist during the break between games, even though she was not feeling well, received a complete advantage. Having won two games with a good ratio of games won to lost (+6), Zhu Lin will now prepare for the meeting with Samsonova. True, Wednesday is a day off for this group, but in the Azalea group the central match between Krejcikova and Kasatkina will take place.

Evgeniy Fedyakov