A season ago, Iga Swiatek qualified for the WTA finals just a couple of weeks early. She was the fifth of eight players to attend the women’s tennis end-of-season event, a situation she found stressful.
And in 2022? Swiatek has been so dominant all year that she booked her seat in September, the first to do so. And when the game starts on Monday, Swiatek will be seeded after holding the No. 1 since April and having led the tour for titles (eight) and wins (64).
Swiatek, a 21-year-old from Poland, leads the Tracy Austin Group, determined by Friday night’s draw, alongside Coco Gauff, Caroline Garcia and Daria Kasatkina. The Nancy Richey Group will consist of Ons Jabeur, Jessica Pegula, Maria Sakkari and Aryna Sabalenka.
The singles and doubles fields have been divided into two groups of four for the Italian round of the WTA finals, which will be played on an indoor hard court. The first two classified of each group will access the semifinals.
Singles groups are ESTABLISHED in Fort Worth 🔒
Which #WTAFinali What are the combinations you most expect? 👇 pic.twitter.com/uV5r3HfGmQ
– wta (@WTA) October 29, 2022
In doubles, the Rosie Casals Group is made up of Pegula and Gauff, Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova, Xu Yifan and Yang Zhaoxuan, and Desire Krawczyk and Demi Schuurs; the Pam Shriver Group is made up of Gabriela Dabrowski and Giuliana Olmos, Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens, Lyudmyla Kichenok and Jelena Ostapenko, and Anna Danilina and Beatriz Haddad Maia.
Pegula and Gauff are the first pair of women to have entered both singles and doubles in the WTA finals since Serena and Venus Williams did so in 2009. Pegula n. 3 and Gauff n. 4 are also the first two American women to qualify. . four by the Williams sisters in 2010.
A photo 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒉 a thousand words 📸
I’m #WTAFinali elite eight ✨ pic.twitter.com/OoEehgW4ZJ
– wta (@WTA) October 29, 2022
Jabeur, Pegula, Gauff, and Kasatkina will first appear in the event. Since 2000, only twice as many WTA Finals entrants have made their singles debut: in 2001, five women took to the field for the first time, and last year, six did.
The WTA Finals return to the United States for the first time since 2005 after the tour took them out of China for the second consecutive year. The 2021 WTA Finals were originally supposed to take place in Shenzhen, China, but have been moved to Guadalajara, Mexico due to the coronavirus pandemic. Then, late last year, the tour said it would have no tournaments in China in 2022 due to safety concerns from Peng Shuai, a Grand Slam doubles champion who accused a former Chinese government official of sexual assault.
