WTA Finals Shenzhen: Ashleigh Barty crowns season as No1 and with WTA’s biggest title
The action from China between the best eight women in tennis had seen both thrills and disappointments.
In this first playing of the WTA Finals in Shenzhen, world No2 Naomi Osaka withdrew injured after her first match, and Bianca Andreescu was forced to retire from her second match, and subsequently from the round-robin phase.
Alternate Kiki Bertens won her first match, and could have qualified for the knock-out stages were it not for a virus hitting her like a bulldozer in her second match against Belinda Bencic. Then Bencic herself succumbed to injury in the middle of her semi-final: She retired at the start of the third set.
But those left standing had produced some outstanding tennis, not least in the shape of the ultimate finalists: Defending champion Elina Svitolina against world No1 Ashleigh Barty.
The 23-year-old Barty had already secured the Race to Shenzhen No1, in a season that saw her win her first Premier Mandatory in Miami and her first Major at Roland Garros. She came into the final tied with Kiki Bertens for the most wins on tour, 55-12, and aimed to become just the seventh player to win the WTA Finals trophy in her first appearance.
Svitolina was aiming to defend the title she won in Singapore last year, and while she had not won a title this season, she had made the quarters of the Australian Open and her first Major semis at Wimbledon and the US Open. What is more, she had beaten Barty in all five previous meetings. Indeed, Barty had only won two sets off Svitolina in those five matches, but their closest contest came this March at Indian Wells. Barty lost, after more than three hours, 7-6(8), 5-7, 6-4.
The Australian admitted, ahead of this sixth meeting, that she knew she had to change her approach if she was to get through Svitolina. And the tactics of Barty were clear from the start.
She opened with a couple of net finishes, a clutch of sliced backhands, and a quick hold. Then Svitolina’s prowess on serve this week also came into sharp focus, with two aces to hold her opening game.
Barty threw in some drop-shot plays, served with angle and kick, and was onto short balls in a flash. But her opponent, one of the fittest and fastest women on the tour, was also wise to Barty’s deft sliced return and touch at the net, and chased down most of what was thrown at her. Winning plays were the order of the day, not errors, and there remained nothing between them deep into the first set, 4-4.
Svitolina, though, was out of challenges by the ninth game, unable to pick the accuracy of Barty’s cross-court skims across the side-lines. But she earned the first break point with a bold play to the net and two overheads.
Three deuces later, and Barty had pulled off three crowd-pleasing volley winners for the hold, and she applied the pressure on her opponent in the 10th game. She earned deuce, and then her own break chance—in this case, a set point.
Svitolina’s tactic of focusing on Barty’s weaker backhand paid off with a winning pass on that wing, but fate was on the Australian’s side, and a winning net-cord shot earned set-point three. Svitolina missed a string of first serves, and Barty jumped on the last of them to make a forehand winner, 6-4.
Svitolina got the jump on Barty at the start of the second set, helped by a double fault to concede the break, 1-2, but in a flash, the Australian was back in the groove, came forward behind some superb sliced angles, and finished with dictating forehands. She held to love, 3-2, and as Svitolina’s serving level dropped, Barty kept up the attack. The Ukrainian double faulted for the first time to offer up another break, 2-4.
A coaching time-out for Svitolina reminded her to refocus on opening the backhand court against Barty, and although the super-fast Barty defended one of the most probing rallies of the match, she too wavered, double faulted, and the break advantage was eliminated.
However, Barty worked more break points in the eighth game. Svitolina saved the first two, but not the third, just missing the line on an attempted pass. And so, at last, Barty served for the title, and the biggest purse ever awarded in a tennis match. And she made no mistake, serving to love with pin-point accuracy, to become WTA champion, 6-3.
It has been some year for the young woman who walked away from tennis after considerable success on the pro tour as a teenager, especially in doubles. She was not ready, and instead switched to professional cricket for two years. She won her first singles title the next year, 2017, and then her first Premier Mandatory and Major titles in doubles in 2018—only to do the same in singles this year.
In the space of 10 months, then, she has risen from No15 to No1, reached her first Australian Open quarter-final, won the Miami PM and then the French Open, and completed her winning surface trio on the grass Birmingham.
Now she is champion of the Shiseido WTA Finals Shenzhen, owner of the biggest cheque in tennis history, $4.42 million, and becomes the first Australian to hold the year-end No1 ranking. No wonder she is proud:
“It has been a remarkable year. Tonight was about coming out and fighting to the end. I couldn’t be prouder… I’m proud of myself and the team, we tried to put ourselves in the biggest situations and occasions and we managed to do that.”
And by the way, there is no holiday yet: She plays the Fed Cup final next week—and on home soil. One can only imagine the support she will get from the green and golds.
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