Ashleigh Barty and Karolina Pliskova have already qualified for the WTA Finals and these two will be joined by Simona Halep and Bianca Andreescu to battle for the year-ending title.
The WTA Finals will be underway from October 27 to November 3 in Shenzhen, China. The season-ending tournament takes in the top eight players that have performed the best in the season.
Halep became the first Romanian to take home the Wimbledon crown this year and marks the sixth consecutive time Halep has qualified for the Finals. She managed to reach the championship match of the event back on her debut in 2014, losing out to Serena Williams.
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Andreescu too had a wonderful season, and although she had to fight some injuries during the year, she managed to win her first Grand Slam at the US Open. This made her the first Canadian male/female to win a Grand Slam. She also won three other WTA titles, so it is safe to say she deserved to play at this event as well.
The WTA Finals event has eight spots, of which four have now been secured by the players mentioned above. The last four spots now remain, and will be secured by the remaining players through tournaments in October.
The China Open, being a WTA Premier Mandatory event, will offer a lip-smacking 1,000 WTA points. So we can expect the players still in contention for the Finals to battle their hearts out and win those points. Elina Svitolina, Belinda Bencic and Kiki Bertens are all in line for qualification and so they will certainly be hoping to fare well at the Beijing Open.
On the doubles front, the Gabriela Dabrowski and Xu Yifan team has qualified for the event. They will now join the already qualified teams of Barbara Strycova/Hsieh Su-Wei, Elise Mertens/Aryna Sabalenka and Timea Babos/Kristina Mladenovic.
The Shenzhen WTA Finals will start on October 27 and will offer up a record-breaking prize money of $14 million. The Finals is an elite-level competition that always delivers on entertainment value. What’s more the race for qualification already has everyone on the edge of their seats.
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