Experience crucial at WTA Finals

Published by Matt Trollope

A stalwart of five WTA Finals dating back to 2009, Caroline Wozniacki heads the Red Group with an unblemished 2-0 record; Getty Images
It’s perhaps no coincidence that Caroline Wozniacki and Karolina Pliskova – who have been to Singapore before – top their round-robin groups while Jelena Ostapenko and Elina Svitolina languish in theirs.

Caroline Wozniacki couldn’t have started off any better at the WTA Finals.

The Dane has in her first two matches dropped just four games collectively, routing both Elina Svitolina (6-2 6-0) and Simona Halep (6-0 6-2) to top the Red Group.

This is Wozniacki’s fifth appearance at the season-ending championship, an exclusive event featuring the world’s top eight singles players and the only one to employ a round-robin format.

She knew just what to expect when kicking off her 2017 campaign in Singapore.

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“I think (I play well) playing the top players in the world, knowing you have to play your best level to beat anyone here. You come into the tournament knowing that you can easily go 0-3 in the group, and if you don’t play to your best tennis – and sometimes even if you play great – you can still leave a tournament and not having won a match,” Wozniacki said.

“I think that kind of motivates me to just start off strong and just go for it. You have nothing to lose at that point. Even if you lose the first match, you still have a chance to go through. I think it’s just a nice cushion to have.”

This knowledge and experience of the WTA Finals, or perhaps lack thereof, seems to have hurt the tournament’s debutants.

Svitolina, Caroline Garcia and Jelena Ostapenko all played ratty matches in their opening encounters; each lost in straight sets, undone by unforced errors.

Ostapenko returned on Tuesday to push Venus Williams to three sets in the match of the tournament, but another loss meant she cannot progress to the semifinals.

Garcia took on Svitolina the next night, and, when down a set and a break, burst into tears.

“I cannot say I handled it very well. Everyone saw it. I didn’t handle it very well at all,” the Frenchwoman, who qualified in the eighth and final place, said.

After a soothing coaching time-out during which her father reportedly told her to simply relax and enjoy the occasion, she was somehow able to follow his advice. She roared back to win the second set, and, when trailing 5-3 in the third, staged another comeback to complete a 6-7(7) 6-3 7-5 victory.

“A few weeks ago I was not very expecting to be here, so the preparation was a little bit complicated. It was a difficult experience, but it’s what I wanted,” Garcia said.

“I was very stressed to be here. Then I started to enjoy it.”

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Someone who’s not quite exhibiting the same enjoyment is Svitolina.

The Ukrainian enjoyed a stellar 2017 season, winning five titles – including three at Premier 5 level – and rising to world No.3 after compiling a dominant 10-3 record against her top-10 rivals.

Yet she has not been able to reproduce that form in Singapore.

“I was training fine … probably when I finish the tournament I will have questions for my team and for myself, of course, what I did wrong, because these kind of matches I played, they were, like, really terrible tennis from me,” Svitolina lamented.

“OK, girls played really really good, but the way I handled situations in this tournament, it was completely, like, brainless, seriously.”

Obviously, superior experience doesn’t account for every result.

Simona Halep, on debut in Singapore in 2014, routed Serena Williams in the round-robin stage and advanced to the final. And this year, despite it being her fourth consecutive appearance at the event, she had no answer to Wozniacki in an embarrassing loss on Tuesday.

The same goes for Garbine Muguruza, who’s appeared three times in a row in the Singapore singles event, and who produced a perfect 3-0 round-robin record in her first outing in 2015. This time around, she experienced a 6-2 6-2 drubbing at the hands of Karolina Pliskova on Tuesday to see her round-robin record in 2017 fall to 1-1.

Pliskova, however, was benefitting from her growing experience at the event, after contesting it for the first time in 2016.

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“It was my goal to (get through) the group, since I won just one match last year, so I just wanted to do a little better this year, so I did,” she said after improving to 2-0 and sealing a place in the semifinals.

“I’m just happy that I don’t have to play the next match for qualifying (for the semifinals), because last year I was playing for it and it was pretty stressful, I would say.”

Although she and Wozniacki lead the field with unbeaten records and spots already locked up in the last four, everyone else, except for Ostapenko, still has a chance to join them.

Muguruza will face Williams on Thursday in a shoot-out for one of those semifinal berths, while on Friday, Halep will take on Svitolina and Garcia will face Wozniacki to determine who goes through with the Dane in the Red Group.

Garcia was wary of the confidence Wozniacki would carry into their match.

“She played some great two matches. It was fast. No one was expecting this kind of match today against Halep,” the Frenchwoman said.

“She has experience, she already came here in Singapore.”

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