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WTA Tour Finals 2021 preview: everything you need to know

The WTA’s crown-jewel event returns for the first time since 2019 with some of the biggest names in women’s tennis set to feature in Guadalajara, Mexico. Find the schedule, players to watch and more, right here.

(2021 Getty Images)

After a sensational year of women’s tennis , the 2021 WTA Finals are back.

The season-ending championships, which feature the top eight singles players and doubles teams from 2021, will take place from November 10 to November 17 at the Panamerican Tennis Center in Guadalajara .

Mexico will host the tournament sometimes dubbed the ‘Fifth Slam’ in a one-time only event after travel restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic meant the competition could not take place in its usual home of Shenzhen in China .

As we head for the final showdown here are the top things you need to know.

WTA Tour Finals 2021: players to watch

Though WTA Finals defending singles champion Ash Barty has decided to sit out the event, lots of stars will be in action in Guadalajara.

Players who qualified in the Top 8 for the WTA Finals 2021

The following eight players will compete in the singles side of the competition:

• Aryna Sabalenka
• Karolina Pliskova
• Barbora Krejcikova
• Iga Swiatek
• Maria Sakkari
• Garbine Muguruza
• Paula Badosa
• Anett Kontaveit

Doubles teams that have qualified in the Top 8 for the WTA Finals 2021

The following eight teams are set to battle in the end-of-year doubles tournament:

• Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova
• Shuko Aoyama and Ena Shibahara
• Hseih Su-Wei and Elise Mertens
• Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Demi Schuurs
• Samantha Stosur and Zhang Shuai
• Alexa Guarachi and Desirae Krawczyk
• Darija Jurak and Andrej Klepac
• Sharon Fichman and Giuliana Olmos

Coco Gauff and Caty McNally , as well as Gabriela Dabrowski and Luisa Stefani all qualified for the Finals. However, they have decided not to participate, which allowed for Fichman and Olmos to step in and compete.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Anett Kontaveit (@anett_kontaveit)

Storylines at WTA Tour Finals 2021

Whatever way the WTA Finals unfold it is for certain that in the singles competition there will be a new champion.

World number one Barty made the decision in late October not to defend her WTA Finals crown in Guadalajara.

After returning to her native Australia following the US Open, the 2021 Wimbledon winner said she was unwilling to compromise on her preparations for the Australian Open with her country's ongoing quarantine requirements.

Who then is primed to take her crown?

It is certainly hard to ignore the hottest player on tour right now: Anett Kontaveit .

The Estonian stunned everyone when she snatched the final top-eight place from the hands of Ons Jabeur after she defeated home favourite Simona Halep at the Transylvania Open (October 31). Her victory at Cluj-Napoca capped a remarkable end-of-season run that has seen her win 26 of her last 28 matches.

Somewhat ironically the 25-year-old’s blistering form was triggered by a five-match losing streak with her last defeat handed to her by Jabeur in the first round of the Cincinnati Masters .

As the only player to feature in the singles and doubles competition Barbora Krejcikova is also another star to keep an eye on.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Women’s Tennis Association (@wta)

The Czech started 2021 ranked 65 but after clinching her maiden Grand Slam at Roland Garros , and then weeks later striking gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in the women’s doubles event, the 25-year-old is coming to Mexico hot.

Her 2021 win-loss record is sitting at a favourable 45-14.

With no defending duo either in the doubles event the door is as equally open for a new pair of WTA Finals champions, and several competitors from 2019 will be back seeking vengeance.

2019 runner-up Hseih Su-Wei will be hoping for more luck in this year’s edition with new partner Elise Mertens (who got only as far as the round robin stage last time). The Belgian is currently ranked number one in the world for women's doubles.

Five-time Olympian Samantha Stosur and Chinese number one Zhang Shuai will also be on the hunt for redemption after the duo got as far as the semi-finals last time. Their consecutive appearance as a team was helped by a late surge that saw them take the 2021 US Open women’s doubles crown.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Samantha Stosur (@samstosur)

WTA Tour Finals 2021: Schedule & Format

Both the singles and doubles competition will feature eight players and teams in a round robin event.

Eight are halved into two groups of four and every player/team will compete against the three others in their group.

The top two from each group will then advance to the semi-finals. The top placed player/team from the first group will play the runner-up from the second and vice versa.

The winners of each semi-final will then meet in the championship final.

Those in the singles event will be vying to lift the WTA Finals Billie Jean King Trophy. Meanwhile in the doubles, the WTA Finals Martina Navratilova Trophy will be the silverware up for grabs.

The WTA Finals will feature two sessions a day with one during the day and another scheduled for night . The round robin matches will conclude on November 15. The semi-finals are penned for November 16 and the championship matches November 17 .

Wednesday November 10

• Day Session 14:00 - singles round robin followed by doubles round robin
• Night Session 19:00 - opening ceremony followed by singles round robin and doubles round robin

Thursday November 11

• Night Session 19:30 - singles round robin followed by doubles round robin

Friday November 12

Saturday November 13

Sunday November 14

Monday November 15

Tuesday November 16

• Day Session 14:00 - singles semi-final followed by doubles semi-final
• Night Session 19:30 - singles semi-final followed by doubles semi-final

Wednesday November 17

• Day Session 17:00 - doubles final followed by awards ceremony
• Night Session 19:30 - singles final followed by awards ceremony

Schedule listed in local time.

How to watch WTA Tour Finals 2021

The WTA Tour Finals will be broadcast across major platforms worldwide.

For a full list of countries and where the WTA Finals will be broadcast click here .

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Women’s Tennis Stages a Fitting Finale to a Zany Year

Favorites who were virtually unknown a year ago. Big names missing in action. And, as usual, a championship completely up for grabs.

By Matthew Futterman

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Karolina Pliskova let out a good long breath Sunday afternoon when she finally defeated Barbora Krejcikova to finish off her round-robin play at the WTA Finals Sunday afternoon.

After three sets in intense sun, there was nothing left to do but wait for the evening session’s outcome, and then, perhaps, play the final two matches of this ridiculously long and taxing year filled with restrictive bubbles and unmatched drama — and more Covid-19 tests than anyone cares to think about.

Finally, mercifully, the 11-month endurance test that has been women’s tennis this year is approaching a fitting end in this near-mile-high city in central Mexico.

Everything about these WTA Finals is so 2021. The season essentially began with more than two dozen players locked in their hotel rooms in Melbourne, Australia, for two weeks because they flew on planes with other players or coaches who tested positive for the coronavirus upon their arrival. So it was only proper that this tournament, which was supposed to be in China, faced its own pandemic-related upheaval. Tour officials had to scramble, moving the tournament out of a country that had largely prohibited foreigners from entering the country.

As the final matches of the year were unfolding, tour officials were also confronting a claim this month by the Chinese player Peng Shuai, 35, who in a social media post said she had been sexually assaulted by a top official in the Chinese government. Her post has since been taken down, and on Sunday, Steve Simon, chief executive of the WTA Tour, which does extensive business in China, called on officials there to investigate the claim fully and transparently.

The tour’s ties to China are deep though. After her match on Sunday, hours after the WTA released its statement condemning the Chinese, Pliskova was asked to film a promotional spot on behalf of the WTA in which she watched messages wishing her well from Chinese fans on an iPad, then recited a short script that culminated with, “I hope to see you soon in China.”

A spokesman for the WTA said the message was targeted to Chinese fans, not government officials.

Beyond logistical hurdles and the mounting China controversy, the most fitting tribute to this roller coaster of a season is that the eight players who earned the privilege of playing in the WTA Finals were about as random a collection as anyone could have imagined. In a sport in which seemingly any player can win a tournament, in which even a teenage qualifier this year surged to a Grand Slam event title, nothing was more appropriate than hearing player after player here confess to not being able to fathom at the start of the year that they would qualify for this exclusive championship.

Paula Badosa of Spain said that in In January in Abu Dhabi, her coach told her that if she maintained her level she would make the top 30. Badosa, a fast-improving 23-year-old, told him that was impossible, that she would settle for the top 50.

After winning the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., in October, she cracked the top 10. “I didn’t even expect it,” Badosa said ahead of her first match here, a 6-4, 6-0 demolition of the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, the No. 1 seed. “Even less expected to be here in the WTA Finals.”

Has there been a tennis season when the beginning and the end looked so different, and not merely because empty stadiums have given way to filled arenas? In February, after the Australian Open, where Naomi Osaka of Japan won her second consecutive Grand Slam singles event and the fourth of her career, she appeared ready to take control of the sport. Ten months later, she is on indefinite leave as she deals with her mental health. No one knows when, or if, she will return.

Serena Williams made the semifinals in Australia and appeared poised for a serious try for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title. She has been sidelined with injuries since the early summer. Ashleigh Barty of Australia, the 2021 Wimbledon champion, passed on the last two months of the season after an exhausting half-year on the road.

The American Sofia Kenin, who arrived in Australia as the defending champion, endured an emergency appendectomy, Covid-19 and a split with her father and coach, Alex Kenin. She tumbled out of the top 10. Simona Halep of Romania, the No. 2 seed in Australia, battled injuries and is now ranked 22nd.

The only player to make it back to this championship from 2019, the last time it was played, was Pliskova of the Czech Republic. In place of the usual stars are players like Maria Sakkari, a 26-year-old from Greece with a physique more typical of a mixed martial arts fighter than a tennis player. She cracked the top 20 only last year.

The biggest name in the game at the moment, Emma Raducanu of Britain, the qualifier who won the U.S. Open in September, is not here because she did not qualify. The qualification requirements were made when everyone just assumed that anyone good enough to win a Grand Slam event would certainly be among the top-ranked players still playing at the end of the year. In a perfect world, the tour finals would feature all the Grand Slam champions and finalists.

Alas, this championship has just a single Grand Slam singles champion from this year, Krejcikova, known until recently as a doubles specialist, who came out of nowhere to win the 2021 French Open. There is just one other Grand Slam finalist — Pliskova, who lost to Barty at Wimbledon. There, Barty looked like she might not lose again for a while, but she did not even make the second week of the U.S. Open and called it a season.

As the last preliminary-round matches opened Sunday, little known Anett Kontaveit of Estonia — no one’s current idea of a tennis star — had emerged as a worldbeater, the winner of her last two tournaments and her first two matches in Mexico. Kontaveit, 25, was the last player to qualify for Guadalajara, but the first player to make it through to the semifinals.

“I feel like I can take on anyone,” Kontaveit said Friday, after she blasted Pliskova, 6-4, 6-0, hitting the ball harder and flatter than in the past. “It’s really just trusting my shots a little more, going for it, but going for it with margins.”

Badosa, too, has continued her new tricks, fulfilling the promise that the tennis cognoscenti had predicted when she was a rising junior. She finished last year ranked 70th, and spent much of the first part of the year losing crucial points in her biggest matches. Not these days: On Saturday, she won nearly all of them, floating across the baseline as she knocked off Sakkari, 7-6 (4), 6-4.

“It’s experience,” Badosa said. “I was quite new at the beginning of the year.”

With three days to go, the WTA Finals are shaping up as a glimpse of what the next season holds for this topsy-turvy sport rather than as a crowning of a champion of champions. Given the tumult in recent years, expecting anything specific from any one player from month to month, much less season to season, has become something of a fool’s errand.

It’s better to just digest the competition as a snapshot of who is hot and who is not at a moment that just happens to be the end of the season.

Those snapshots include Kontaveit almost never missing; Badosa wearing out the paint in the corners of the court with her forehand; Sabalenka blasting 120-mile-per-hour second serves and willing the crowd into her corner in a come-from-behind, three-set win over Iga Swiatek of Poland on Saturday night.

“I kept saying, ‘You have to get through this challenge, you have to get through this challenge,’ again and again,” Sabalenka said at the end.

She was talking about the match. She could have been talking about the season.

Matthew Futterman is a veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.” More about Matthew Futterman

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'I made it!' - Muguruza becomes first Spaniard to win WTA Finals title

18/11/2021 at 08:15

Top stories

'I can't believe it' - Kontaveit edges out Sakkari to make WTA Finals showpiece

17/11/2021 at 12:33

Muguruza overpowers Badosa to reach final

16/11/2021 at 21:57

Sakkari extends incredible top-five run - but who will win WTA Finals?

16/11/2021 at 12:21

Sakkari through to WTA Finals semis after thrilling win over Sabalenka

16/11/2021 at 08:22

More top news

Muguruza ends kontaveit's 12-match win streak to secure wta finals semi-final spot.

15/11/2021 at 08:48

Pliskova fights back from set and break down to beat Krejcikova in Guadalajara

14/11/2021 at 22:40

Top seed Sabalenka battles past Swiatek in deciding set

14/11/2021 at 09:52

Brilliant Badosa breezes past Sakkari in WTA World Tour Finals upset

13/11/2021 at 22:39

'You don’t have to be a top junior to make it to the top' - Sakkari on her rise

13/11/2021 at 13:41

Kontaveit beats Pliskova in straight sets in another impressive showing

13/11/2021 at 00:08

Badosa crushes Sabalenka at WTA Finals to maintain winning run

12/11/2021 at 08:34

Sakkari starts campaign with dominant win over Swiatek

11/11/2021 at 21:52

WTA Finals order of play - Pliskova and Kontaveit look to back up wins

11/11/2021 at 16:01

Pliskova opens WTA Finals with tight win over Muguruza

11/11/2021 at 08:51

Kontaveit beats Krejcikova in WTA Finals opener to continue winning run

10/11/2021 at 22:01

WTA Finals 2021: Order of play day 2 - Sabalenka and Swiatek to start campaign

10/11/2021 at 16:37

Danielle Collins says 2024 season will be her last on WTA Tour

No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek survives in three sets against Danielle Collins after an epic rally on match point during the second round of the Australian Open. (1:51)

• D'Arcy Maine, ESPN.com

Moments after losing to Iga Swiatek in a three-set thriller that lasted over three hours in the second round of the Australian Open on Thursday, American Danielle Collins announced that the 2024 season would be her final year on the WTA Tour.

"This is going to be my last season, actually, competing," Collins, 30, told reporters in her postmatch news conference. "I don't really know exactly when, but this will be my last season and I'm really looking forward to that."

Collins turned pro in 2016 following a successful college career during which she won the 2014 NCAA singles title while at Virginia. She was quick to find success and steadily rise up the rankings.

Collins made a name for herself at the Australian Open in 2019 by reaching the semifinals. She had never won a major match prior to that tournament, and she entered the top 25 for the first time as a result. She won both of her two career WTA titles in the summer of 2021, at the Palermo Open and the Silicon Valley Classic.

Collins reached the final of the 2022 Australian Open but lost to beloved home favorite Ashleigh Barty . Collins reached a career-high ranking of No. 7 shortly after.

Known for her ruthless energy and signature "Come on!" yells during matches, Collins looked poised for an upset over Swiatek before the world No. 1 fought back to win the final five games of the deciding set.

When asked why she would retire from the sport despite still being competitive against the best players, Collins said she has other things she wants to do.

"I feel like I've had a pretty good career," Collins said. "There has certainly been ups and downs to it, and I think the travel and some of the things away from the court with scheduling and all of that, this is a really tough sport.

"I have other things that I'd kind of like to accomplish in my life outside of tennis, and would like to be able to ... have the time to be able to do that. Obviously having kids is a big priority for me."

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