WTA Finals Preview: Riyadh field offers a snapshot of 2024 season

This week, two people have asked me when the WTA Finals in Riyadh begins. Each time, after I’ve told them that the first matches are on Saturday, they’ve acted surprised, and said the same thing: “Wow, that soon?”

Only in tennis could November 2nd seem like an early end to a season that begins on December 31st of the previous year.

The tours’ year-end championships are one last big-money star war before the pro game goes dark through the holidays. But the lineups at these events also offer a snapshot of the season just passed. They consist of the eight players who have earned the highest number of ranking points, and showed up on our TV screens the most. Many of them, knowing that an 11-month season will come with ups and downs, surges and lulls, make qualifying for this event their primary goal at the start of the year. Getting here doesn’t mean you were perfect, but it does mean you did a lot of things right along the way.

To me, three themes of the 2024 WTA season will be represented by the players we’ll see in Riyadh over the next week.

New blood: Jasmine Paolini and Zheng Qinwen

We know it’s a long way to the top in tennis, and that precious few players ever reach it. Which makes it all the more satisfying when a new face beats the odds, surprises us all, and proves that she belongs.

While the WTA’s biggest names—Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff—stayed the same in 2024, there was a healthy injection of new blood just below them, from Emma Navarro to Diana Shnaider to Mirra Andreeva to Marta Kostyuk, all of whom are 23 or under and finished in the Top 20. There were also a few veterans who lived up to their potential in a way they hadn’t before, including Danielle Collins, Anna Kalinskaya, and Donna Vekic.

In that sense, two different WTA traditions have combined: 1980s-style teen prodigies like Andreeva are viable again, while the more recent trend toward late bloomers continues.

With Zheng and Paolini, we get one of each—a prodigy and a late bloomer. We also get two personalities that are as varied as their ages.

At 21, Zheng made good on the sky’s-the-limit promise she showed in 2022 and 2023. She won gold Olympic gold, made her first Slam final in Melbourne, cracked the Top 10, and consolidated her improvements with a successful Asian swing, in front of sold-out crowds. She did it all with the forward-marching, all-business, self-confidence of a player with much bigger plans for the future.

At 28, Paolini made good on a potential that few saw in her during her first 10 years on tour. At the start of 2024, the 5-foot-4 Italian was ranked 30th, and had never made it past the second round at a Slam in 27 tries. Then she reached the finals of two in a row, on two different surfaces, at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. Just as important, Paolini’s small stature, explosive speed and swing, and easy smile made her an instant crowd favorite.

While Zheng will surely stay at the top for longer, here’s hoping Paolini is just getting started, too.

Slam Champs Searching for Form: Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina

Rybakina and Gauff won their first and only Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon in 2022 and the US Open in 2023, respectively. At the time, it was hard to tell what those wins meant for their futures. They were too young and skilled to be one-Slam wonders, but neither had been knocking on the door at the majors, either.

As 2024 ends, the American and the Kazakh are still in those in-between states. When you think of their seasons, you probably think of their disappointments first. Both had Grand Slam dreams, but neither won one, or reached a final. They failed to win any titles at all for months at a time.

And they split with the coaches who helped them to their best results. Rybakina also pulled out of numerous events due to injury or illness.

Yet they’re both here. It can be hard to remember now, but Gauff made the semis at the Australian Open and Roland Garros, while Rybakina reached five finals and won three titles, and was the favorite to win Wimbledon before bowing out in the semifinals.

There are a lot of WTA players who rise up, fall back, and scrap to find their old form, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Among today’s Top 50, Daria Kasatkina, Paula Badosa, Jelena Ostapenko, Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sakkari, Amanda Anisimova, Marketa Vondrousova, Naomi Osaka, and half a dozen others fit that description much of the time.

They can take hope from Gauff and Rybakina, who didn’t have the seasons they hoped for, but who made it to the pot of gold at end of the rainbow in Riyadh anyway.

Long-distance rivals: Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka

We’re due—overdue—for a significant face-off between these two. Yes, they’ve played three times in 2024, but only one of those matches, the Madrid final in May, was worthy of their names.

Swiatek and Sabalenka have dominated the last three seasons in shifts. Sabalenka comes out hot in Australia, Swiatek takes the reins during the clay season, and then Sabalenka returns to form in late summer and fall on hard courts. In 2024, that has left them roughly 3,000 points ahead of the pack; Sabalenka has the lead right now, but a final-round showdown between could decide who finishes the year No. 1.

Can it happen? Sabalenka is more likely to make it there. She rolled to late-season titles in Cincinnati, New York, and Wuhan, while Swiatek hasn’t won anything since Roland Garros, and will be debuting a new coach, Wim Fissette, in Riyadh.

Whatever happens to close out 2024, the longer-term hope is that a final in Riyadh would be a harbinger of more to come. Even after three years at the top together, Swiatek and Sabalenka have met just once at a major, and never in a major final. They’re way too good, and the potential for their rivalry has way too much potential, for them to keep dominating in shifts forever.