The last tournament of the year, which kicks off this Wednesday in Guadalajara (Mexico), embodies the accelerated change in women’s tennis.
An eloquent example of the renewal process that women’s tennis is experiencing are the WTA Finals that begin this Wednesday in the Mexican city of Guadalajara. Only Karolina Pliskova, which has won a place for the fifth consecutive year, and Garbie Muguruza, present in the tournament for the fourth time, they repeat in the competition that brings together the eight best players of the course.
It is not a purely generational replacement, because among the six debutants there are tennis players already of a certain distance, as is the case of Barbora Krejcikova, who at the age of 25 won his first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros, Anett Kontaveit, also 25, which bursts like a cyclone, or Paula Badosa, who will meet on Monday 24 in the course of his delayed outbreak. None of the participants in the 2019 edition, the last one that was contested, appears in the cast. It is true that Ashleigh Barty, No. 1 in the world and current champion, has resigned. The Australian, always extremely careful with her schedule, prefers to focus on rest and preseason with her eyes on the first big game next year, which will be played in Melbourne from January 17-30.
The tournament was born thus very open, with the added particularity of its traditional competition system: two groups of four in league system with the first two classified from each of them crossing in the semifinals.
Discarded in September due to traffic restrictions caused by Covid-19, the Chinese city of Shenzhen, the Pan-American Center of Zapopan, with a capacity for 6,500 spectators, is hosting a competition whose winner can enter four million euros, if he wins his five games.
There will be a new champion. And it will be reckless to discard. Absences as significant as those of Naomi Osaka and Simona Halep, who, for various reasons, have been below their usual performance in the course that ends, add balance to a competition where none of those present have reason to hide their heads.
Looking at the more immediate results, it is important not to lose sight of Anett Kontaveit, who has 10 consecutive victories and has won 26 of his last 28 games, with accolades this year in Cleveland, Ostrava, Moscow and Cluj. By no means detracts from Paula Badosa, brilliant champion in the WTA 1000 of Indian Wells. The case of the Spanish woman born in New York is significant. After winning the junior title at Roland Garros in 2015, it was not until August 2019 that he managed to enter the top 100, after a pilgrimage through third-order tournaments and anxiety problems derived from his frustration at not meeting expectations. In two or three years it should be in the top 10. He has no limit, predicted in August 2019 his then coach Xavi Bud, the man who brought her out of ostracism to enter the top 100. Bud’s suggestion has been fulfilled with enormous precision: last Monday Badosa was among the top 10 in the ranking. After breaking his professional tie with Bud, he worked alongside Javier Mart and now he does it with Jorge Garca.
Also winner in 2021 of the WTA 250 in Belgrade, a quarter-finalist at Roland Garros and the Olympic Games and a semifinalist in Madrid, Lyon and Charleston, where she eliminated Barty, Badosa makes her debut in the tournament with Indian Wells as the last reference.
Second oldest tennis player in Guadalajara, after Pliskova, Muguruza was a semifinalist of the WTA Finals in 2015 and remained in the group stage in the next two editions. Winner in Dubai and a few weeks ago in Chicago, she is the most qualified of all the participants if we stick to Grand Slam titles. He raised the cup at Roland Garros in 2016 and at Wimbledon a year later. You have a new opportunity to revalidate your credit, that of immense potential, which has little to envy any of its rivals.
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