Racket Ready: The Top Contenders to Watch at the 2024 WTA Finals

Racket Ready: The Top Contenders to Watch at the 2024 WTA Finals

November 2, 2024 Catherine Williams Sports

Match schedule: 2024year 11month 2Sun – Nov 9Sun (Korean time) Saudi Arabia Riyadh

Gosu Sports Match Prediction: Jeong Chin-won wins (8.5), Coco goff orange group 1above (2.625), jasmine paulini vs Elena Rivakina – paulini win (2.625)

The 2024 WTA Finals, which will decide this year’s WTA king, will open in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on November 2 (Korean time). The main matches of this tournament will be broadcast live on tvN SPORTS.

World No. 1 Arina Sabalenka is the strongest candidate to win the WTA Finals. He has won two hard court Grand Slams this year and is showing his peak skills with 20 wins in the last 21 games. Court conditions at the King Saud University Indoor Arena are also expected to be favorable to her.

The competition location has changed, but the format is the same. The players are divided into two groups of four and play a round robin from Saturday to Friday, and then the top two from each group advance to the semifinals.

Arina SabalenkaArina SabalenkaArina SabalenkaRobert Prange

Sabalenka competes in the purple group alongside two-time Grand Slam finalist Jasmine Paolini, Elena Rybakina, who has played only two matches since Wimbledon, and rising Olympic champion Chung Chin-won.

In the Orange Group, coach Wim Fisete will face off against Iga Sibiontek, who is returning for the first time since the US Open, as well as Coco Goff, Jessica Pegula, and Wimbledon upset winner Barbora Krejcikova.

Sabalenka is the strongest candidate to win, but Chung Chin-won is expected to finish the season well with higher odds. Chinese players have shown outstanding performance recently, including reaching the semifinals of the Beijing and Wuhan competitions and winning the Tokyo Pan Pacific Open.

Chung Chin-won is inferior to Sabalenka with a record of 0-4, but is narrowing the gap by winning the first set for the first time in the Wuhan tournament. Since it is a round robin format, even if they lose the first game against Sabalenka, they have a chance to advance to the semifinals.

While it is difficult to judge Civil Tech’s current capabilities, Goff is attracting attention as a candidate for first place in the Orange Group. Although the 20-year-old American player is inferior in her record against Sibion ​​Tech and Pegula, she is showing her best performance recently, including winning the China Open and a close match with Sabalenka in the semifinals of the Wuhan Open.

Jasmine PaoliniJasmine PaoliniJasmine PaoliniWANG ZHAO

Paolini is expected to win against Rivakina in the first match of the Purple Group on Saturday. Italy’s Paolini defeated Rivachina in the quarterfinals of the French Open in May. Although his recent upward trend has slowed down, he had a close three-set match with Jeong Chin-won in the quarterfinals of the Wuhan Tournament.

In a situation where it is difficult to estimate Rivakina’s injury recovery status and performance, it seems that Paolini can take advantage of this to win.