The bar in women’s tennis has been lowered so much that all this event had to be was not a disaster. The WTA Finals, supposedly the showpiece event of the women’s professional tour, has been left so battered and bruised by successive cataclysms that organisers just wanted to get through this latest edition without major incident. Success would be defined by absence of catastrophe.
Remember that the last two hastily arranged events to end the season have been utter fiascos. Two years ago the WTA Finals were held in Fort Worth, Texas, in a converted rodeo venue that still smelled like one. Last year, organisers had barely finished building the temporary stands in Cancun when players arrived for an outdoor tournament scheduled during hurricane season.
Both deals to host the event were done at the last minute on a one-off basis, so when a three-year contract to host the WTA Finals in Riyadh was announced back in April – moral grounds aside – at least they were several points ahead of previous hosts. Read Next I was a Wimbledon line judge but I quit before they replaced me with a robot All the more embarrassing then when, seven months later, organisers still failed to fill the stands for some of the world’s best players. There were barely 400 people watching.
“It’s extremely disappointing when you’ve got the world’s best players – Iga Swiatek , Coco Gauff – performing in front of a crowd like that today,” Tim Henman told The Telegraph earlier in the week. �.