Veronika Kudermetova won four hands

The final tournament of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) with a prize fund of $5 million has ended in Fort Worth, Texas. The winner in doubles was Russian Veronika Kudermetova, who, together with Belgian Elise Mertens, defeated the Czech duo of Barbora Kreichikova and Katerina in the final. Sinyakova. This success allowed Kudermetova to become the second racket of the world in doubles at the end of the year. In the singles final, Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia outplayed Belarusian Arina Sabolenko.

The ending of the doubles final of this year’s WTA Finals turned out to be extremely dramatic and spectacular. And she very symbolically drew a line under the season, which turned out to be very successful for Russian tennis players. Czechs Barbora Kreychikova and Katerina Sinyakova were leading the super tie-break against Veronika Kudermetova and Eliza Mertens with a score of 7:2, when everything turned upside down on the court and an unexpected denouement came. The Russian and the Belgian took nine of the eleven remaining points, including the second match point, which Kreychikova gave away with an unsuccessful volley.

The triumph of Kudermetova and Mertens, of course, came as a surprise, because their rivals won six Grand Slam championships together, three of them this season, as well as seven more titles, including at the Tokyo Olympics and last year’s final tournament in Guadalajara, Mexico. Moreover, Sinyakova, who is trained by the most experienced Russian specialist Evgenia Manyukova, has been leading the world pair rating for the third week in a row.

However, this time the Czechs did not cope with the psychological pressure in the decisive minutes of the meeting, which, in turn, was simply brilliantly achieved by their rivals.

Duet of a Russian woman and a Belgian woman for the first time formed in April last year, when they tried out together in a small clay tournament in Istanbul and immediately took the title. After that, for some time Kudermetova played with other partners. In particular, with Elena Vesnina in the Wimbledon final, they conceded Mertens and Taiwanese representative Xi Suwei, and at the Olympics did not use four match points in the match for bronze medals against the Brazilian couple. Resuming joint performances in January, Kudermetova and Mertens immediately reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open, after which they took the title in Dubai. They got to the WTA Finals quite confidently, they were “seeded” there under the fourth number, did not lose a single meeting at the group stage, and in the semi-finals they did not leave a chance for the American-Dutch pair Desire Krawczyk-Demi Schürs, giving her only two games.

As a result, Kudermetova, who won another tournament victory in May in Rome with another partner, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, managed to finish the season in second place in the doubles ranking, which, of course, is an excellent indicator. According to Elena Vesnina, who headed it in 2018, there is nothing surprising here. “In the game at the net, Veronica is now one of the best in the world. She is great at interceptions, helping her partner, and also wins a large number of easy points due to active first serve and powerful shots from the back line, which is very much appreciated in a pair, ”Vesnina believes. And because Kudermetova finished world No. 9 in the singles rankings, just one spot behind Daria Kasatkina, she became the first Russian woman to finish a season in the top 10 in both categories since Svetlana Kuznetsova did so in 2004.

Not surprisingly, of the nearly $5 million in career prize money earned by Kudermetova, $2 million came this year.

Quite unexpectedly ended WTA Finals in singles. True, there the main surprise was born at the semi-final stage, where the Belarusian Arina Sabolenko managed to break the resistance of the unconditional favorite of the Polish tournament, Iga Swiatek, in three sets. However, this did not help to take the title of Sobolenko. In the final, she lost with a score of 6:7 (4:7), 4:6 to the most experienced participant in the tournament – 29-year-old Caroline Garcia. The fact that this Frenchwoman is capable of exploits was known back in 2011, when at the age of 17 she put up a stubborn resistance to Maria Sharapova at Roland Garros, but Garcia managed to really reveal her talent only in recent months. The Frenchwoman won tournaments on all types of courts – grass (Bad Homburg), clay (Warsaw), as well as outdoor hard (Cincinnati) and indoor (Fort Worth). Thus, she made a giant jump in the final ranking compared to last year, moving from 74th to 4th place.

Evgeny Fedyakov