The WTA Finals are a competition between the eight best tennis players in a given season. They are selected by the WTA Race ranking, but since this season, the rules for obtaining promotion to the event have changed slightly. The top seven players advanced automatically, and the eighth place was left to the highest-ranked winner of a Grand Slam tournament, although she could not place lower than 20th.
Kasatkina couldn't stand it after the match against Świątek. These are her allegations
Thanks to this, Barbora Krejcikova took part in the competition in Riyadh. The winner of this year's Wimbledon in the WTA Race ranking took 12th place with 2,814 points, so in the past she would not have had a chance at the WTA Finals, but the new rules and the victory in London allowed her to compete in Riyadh, which she successfully took advantage of, because the 28-year-old Czech turned out to be the biggest surprise.
At the inauguration, she lost to Iga Świątek in three sets, but later turned out to be better than both Americans: Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, thanks to which she took first place in the orange group and advanced to the semi-finals, where she will face Qinwen Zheng.
Daria Kasatkina became a victim of the new regulations promoting Grand Slam winners. The Russian took ninth place in the WTA Race rankings, but Emma Navarro, who was ahead of her, had already signaled that she was ending the competition this year and was not going to Riyadh. Thanks to this, Kasatkina became the first reserve, although under the old rules she would have been a full participant of the WTA Finals. The tennis player did not hide her disappointment.
– In my opinion, WTA Race is WTA Race. So it's about how many points you earn in a year. If you win a Grand Slam tournament, you've already achieved what you've achieved. You won the Grand Slam, points, money, glory, everything. Here we are talking about the WTA Race, so I think that everything should depend on points – said Daria Kasatkina after the match with Iga Świątek, because due to Jessica Pegula's withdrawal, the Russian had a chance to play one match. In the confrontation with the Pole, she won only one game.