Tennis News

LONDON, England – History is on the line at Wimbledon on Saturday as Serena Williams chases her 22nd Grand Slam title when she faces the in-form Angelique Kerber.

Before the two face off on Centre Court, here are 10 points to ponder…

(1) Serena Williams (USA #1) vs (4) Angelique Kerber (GER #4)
Head-To-Head: Williams leads Kerber, 5-2

1) Williams is attempting to equal the Open Era record of major titles.
If Williams wins, she will equal Steffi Graf’s Open Era record of 22 Grand Slam titles, and move to within touching distance of Margaret Court’s all-time leading tally of 24.

2) And she has a magnificent record in Grand Slam finals.
Serena has only lost six of her 27 Grand Slam finals: the 2001 US Open (to Venus Williams), 2004 Wimbledon (to Maria Sharapova), 2008 Wimbledon (to Venus Williams), 2011 US Open (to Sam Stosur), 2016 Australian Open (to Kerber) and 2016 Roland Garros (to Garbiñe Muguruza). This is the second-best winning percentage in the Open Era after Court (11-1)

3) Kerber was eight years old the last time a German won Wimbledon.
If Kerber wins, she will be the first German woman to win the Wimbledon title since Steffi Graf in 1996.

4) History repeating itself?
If Kerber is looking for good omens, then she will find several by studying the 1996 Championships: Kerber and Graf overcame opponents from five different countries en route to the final; both beat their opponent in a major final earlier in the season – Graf defeated Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario at Roland Garros.

The 1996 final also pitted the No.1 and No.4 seeds against one another. Although, unfortunately for Kerber, on that occasion the No.4 seed came out second best. 

5) Serena is trying to become the oldest Grand Slam champion in the Open Era. Again.
If Serena wins, she will break her own record as the oldest woman to win a Grand Slam title in the Open Era. Serena was 33 years and 285 days when she won her 21st major, at last year’s Wimbledon; she will be 34 years and 283 days on Saturday.

6) Kerber displaying her bouncebackability…
Less than seven weeks ago, Kerber was crashing out in the first round of Roland Garros to Kiki Bertens. Victory over Williams in Saturday’s final will see her become just the third player in the Open Era to bounce back from an opening round defeat in Paris by lifting the Venus Rosewater Dish. The other two? Serena (2012) and Venus (2001), of course.

7) Achieving the Serena-Venus double.
Kerber is bidding to become just the eighth woman to beat both Williams sisters at the same tournament. Click here to find out the identity of the magnificent seven to have achieved the feat.

8) Kerber will be back up to No.2 after Wimbledon.
Serena’s semifinal victory over Elena Vesnina ended Kerber’s slim hopes of overhauling her atop the rankings. However, should the German lift the title, she will trail Williams by less than 500 points.

Meanwhile, the results in south-west London have maintained the status quo atop the Road To Singapore leaderboard; Williams and Kerber will stay in the top two spots, although both are yet to secure qualification for the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global. 

9) Kerber’s unblemished record.
Kerber has not dropped a set on her way to the final. The last player to win a major without losing a set was Serena at the 2014 US Open. Marion Bartoli was the last to achieve the feat at Wimbledon, in 2013.

10) The exclusive leftie club.
Kerber is attempting to become just the fourth left-hander to be crowned Wimbledon champion in the Open Era. The other three are Ann Jones (1969) Martina Navratilova (1978, 1979, 1982-87, 1990) and Petra Kvitova (2011, 2014). The only other leftie to reach the final was 1992 runner-up Monica Seles.

LONDON, England – Serena Williams has resumed her relentless march towards tennis history this fortnight at Wimbledon. As she closes in on a 22nd Grand Slam crown, here are some noteworthy numbers on the WTA’s indomitable World No.1.

(updated after her semifinal win at Wimbledon)

Serena & Grand Slams
~ Serena has the second-most Grand Slam singles titles in the Open Era with 21 (Graf 22)
~ Serena has the third-most Grand Slam singles titles all-time with 21 (Court 24, Graf 22)
~ Serena has the second-most Grand Slam match wins in Open Era with 303 (Navratilova 306)
~ Serena is trying to win her seventh Wimbledon title (won it in 2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2015); a seventh title would tie her with Steffi Graf and Dorothea Lambert Chambers on the all-time leaderboard
~ This is Serena’s 22nd time being the No.1 seed at a Grand Slam (she’s won 11 of the first 21)
~ Serena is 21-6 in Grand Slam final matches (her six defeats came against Venus Williams (2001 US Open, 2008 Wimbledon), Maria Sharapova (2004 Wimbledon), Samantha Stosur (2011 US Open), Angelique Kerber (2016 Australian Open) and Garbiñe Muguruza (2016 Roland Garros))

Serena & Finals
~ Serena is 21-6 in Grand Slam singles finals, the second-best winning percentage Open Era (Court was 11-1)
~ Serena won eight straight Grand Slam singles finals between 2012 Wimbledon and 2015 Wimbledon; losses on each side were 2011 US Open (l. Stosur) and 2016 Australian Open (l. Kerber)
~ Serena has won 31 of her last 36 finals (only losses: Azarenka at 2013 Doha, 2013 Cincinnati, 2016 Indian Wells, Kerber at 2016 Australian Open and Muguruza at 2016 Roland Garros)

Serena & Age-Related Stats
~ Serena is the oldest woman to win a major in the Open Era (33y & 285d at 2015 Wimbledon)
~ Serena is the oldest No.1 in WTA history (set record when returned to No.1 on February 18, 2013)
~ Serena has the longest winning span between majors of any woman Open Era at 15 years and 10 months between 1999 US Open and 2015 Wimbledon (Evert, Navratilova and Graf had 12-year spans)
~ Serena has won eight majors since turning 30, the most after 30 by far in the Open Era (Court and Navratilova three each, King and Evert two each and Jones, Wade, Li and Pennetta one each)

Miscellaneous
~ Serena will spend her 176th & 177th straight weeks at No.1 during the Wimbledon fortnight (second-longest streak at No.1 in WTA history after Graf’s 186)
~ Serena is spending her 299th & 300th career weeks at No.1 during the Wimbledon fortnight (second-most weeks at No.1 in WTA history after Graf’s 377)
~ Serena has the most career prize money in WTA history ($77.6M – next-most is Sharapova’s $36.8M)
~ Serena has the fifth-most WTA titles in Open Era with 70 (after Navratilova, Evert, Graf, Court)

Before & After Patrick Mouratoglou
Serena joined forces with Patrick Mouratoglou after falling first round at the 2012 French Open, and the dynamic duo’s numbers speak for themselves – here’s a comparison of before and after Mouratoglou:

Pre-Patrick Mouratoglou
win-loss: 523-107 (.830)
WTA titles: 41
Grand Slam titles: 13 out of 47 (.277)
vs Top 10: 111-59 (.653)

Post-Patrick Mouratoglou
win-loss: 244-20 (.924)
WTA titles: 29
Grand Slam titles: 8 out of 16 (.500)
vs Top 10: 56-7 (.889)

Since Regaining World No.1
Since returning to the top spot on the WTA Rankings on February 18, 2013, Serena’s been fantastic:
win-loss: 201-17
WTA titles: 23 of 33
Grand Slam titles: 6 of 13
vs Top 10: 41-5 (.891)

LONDON, Great Britain – In a rematch of the riveting Australian Open final, can Serena Williams lock up her 22nd major title over her Melbourne conqueror, Angelique Kerber?

The top seed has suffered three straight Grand Slam disappointments, but seems to have gotten her swagger back since her second round struggle against American Christina McHale, and played some of her best tennis of the fortnight to dismiss Elena Vesnina in the semifinals.

Kerber is looking for her second major of the season, and surely has fond memories of her Australian Open triumph over the six-time Wimbledon winner. The German hasn’t dropped a set through her first six matches, playing clutch tennis against No.5 seed Simona Halep and five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in ehr last two matches.

Stay tuned for Saturday’s Wimbledon final Live Blog, which promises to-the-minute commentary an insight, courtesy of WTA Insider’s Courtney Nguyen:

Angelique Kerber (+2, No.4 to No.2): The German reached her second Grand Slam final of the season, knocking out five-time champion and former No.1 Venus Williams before battling through a two-set defeat to World No.1 Serena Williams. Kerber is back to the career-high ranking she first earned in February upon claiming her maiden major title at the Australian Open.

Venus Williams (+1, No.8 to No.7): Williams moves more comfortably into the Top 8 after making her first major semifinal since the 2010 US Open. Back up to her highest ranking since early 2011, Venus fought through five tough matches to finish in the final fall before falling to Kerber in straight sets.

Carla Suárez Navarro (+3, No.12 to No.9): Suárez Navarro returned to the Top 10 following her best career grass court season. Backing up a run to the semifinals of the Aegon Classic, the Spaniard reached the second week of Wimbledon for just the second time in her career, bowing out to Venus Williams despite having chances to serve out the opening set.

Svetlana Kuznetsova (+4, No.14 to No.10): The Russian veteran fulfilled her promise of returning to the Top 10 after having chances to do so earlier in the season. Kuznetsova is at her highest rank since the spring of 2010, just before her title defense of the French Open title she had won the year before. Kuznetsova played Serena Williams tough after knocking out former No.1 Caroline Wozniacki en route to the fourth round.

Dominika Cibulkova (+6, No.18 to No.12): Cibulkova’s march back toward the Top 10 continued at Wimbledon, where the Slovakian dynamo followed up her title run at the Aegon International with a run to the quarterfinals of the All England Club.

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (+4, No.23 to No.19): Up to her highest ranking in over three years, Pavlyuchenkova played her best grass court tennis of her career to reach her first Wimbledon quarterfinal – upsetting Timea Bacsinszky and CoCo Vandeweghe along the way.

Elena Vesnina (+26, No.50 to No.24): Ranked outside the Top 100 to start the season, Vesnina cut her ranking in half following her fortnight at Wimbledon, where she reached her first Grand Slam semifinal. After surviving a thrilling, rain-delayed encounter with doubles partner Ekaterina Makarova, she put on an emphatic display to dispatch Cibulkova in the quarterfinals.

The following women all reached career-high rankings; click here to see the full rankings updated as of 7/11/16!

New #WTA Career-High Rankings@KikiBertens – No.26 @DKasatkina – No.29 @MonicaAce93 – No.33
Misaki Doi – No.36 @MariaSakkari – No.97

— WTA (@WTA) July 11, 2016

WHITE PLAINS, NY, USA – The USTA announced a major prize money increase for the 2016 US Open. A $4 million boost brings the total purse for the tournament to a record $46.3 million, a 10-percent increase over the 2015 US Open prize money totals.

In all, the US Open will provide the richest purse in tennis history at this year’s event.

Both the men’s and women’s singles champions will earn $3.5 million, the largest payout in US Open history. The average increase per round for the singles competition is 10 percent above the 2015 US Open. Both the men’s and women’s doubles champion teams will earn $625,000, the highest in US Open history, and overall doubles prize money has been increased by 10.5 percent.. The US Open Qualifying Tournament will offer more than $1.9 million in prize money, a 10 percent increase over 2015.

This year’s US Open, scheduled for August 29 through September 11 – with the US Open Qualifying Tournament beginning on August 23 – will feature a number of major enhancements, including a retractable roof over Arthur Ashe Stadium, a new Grandstand Stadium, and a completely redesigned southern campus to ease accessibility and crowding throughout the site.

“We are proud that this year’s US Open will offer the richest purse in tennis history,” said USTA Chairman of the Board and President Katrina Adams. “We continue to invest in all aspects of this world-class event to provide the best services and experiences for the players, our fans, and all of the US Open partners.”

Round-by-round individual prize money for the US Open singles tournaments are as follows:

Singles:
Winner: $3,500,000
Runner-Up: $1,750,000
Semifinalist: $875,000
Quarterfinalist: $450,000
Round of 16: $235,000 
Round of 32: $140,000 
Round of 64: $77,200
Round of 128: $43,300

WTA CEO Steve Simon spoke at length about the importance of SAP’s analytic advancements on the company’s CEO Live Page.

“Running SAP HANA is definitely making it easier for fans to enjoy us,” said Simon. “It’s giving them the in-depth background information that they’re looking for. No longer is the fan just looking for pictures; they’re looking for the story behind the pictures, and SAP is helping us provide that.

“The goal of the WTA, which is currently the number one women’s professional sports league in the world, is not just to be the number one women’s sports league in the world, but to be competitive with all sports. Our partnership with SAP is going to allow us to build audience because of the stories that we’re able to tell, and thus be competitive in that marketplace.”

Click here to hear more from Simon in the full video as part of SAP’s Live Business Leaders series.

SINGAPORE – Friday marks 100 days until the start of the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global, and following an exciting, unpredictable and historic first half of the season all is still to play for.

The Road To Singapore leaderboard has started to take shape, with faces fresh and familiar occupying, while defending doubles champions Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza became the first to book their place at the season-ending finale.

At present Angelique Kerber, Garbiñe Muguruza, Serena Williams, the winners of 2016’s first three Grand Slams, and Victoria Azarenka, who competed the rare Indian Wells-Miami double, are the mid-season pacesetters on the leaderboard. However, with defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska and the in-form Dominika Cibulkova among those in pursuit, there will be plenty of jostling for position as the tour heads for the hardcourts of North America. 

“It has been a truly exciting year for women’s tennis and as we mark 100 days out from the WTA Finals, we have seen different champions crowned at each of the first three Grand Slams this year. The Road to Singapore has never been more thrilling and this is testament to the current depth of the women’s game, as we look to the future of outstanding players rising up the ranks,” said Melissa Pine, Vice-President of WTA Asia-Pacific and Tournament Director of the WTA Finals.

Hingis and Mirza are not the only big names to confirm their place in Singapore: former champion Chris Evert will return as official event ambassador for the third consecutive year. In her role, Evert will work with players and other ambassadors including Martina Navratilova and Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario to promote and raise the profile of the event and the sport in the region.

“As WTA Finals ambassador for the past couple of years, I’ve seen the event grow, and with it, the popularity of tennis in the region,” Evert said of her role. “This has been a great year for women’s tennis and there is so much to look forward to in the coming months on the Road to Singapore as we head towards the big finale. The strength and level of competition have been simply amazing, and I’m looking forward to an exciting eight days of tennis in October!”

This has not been the only off-court development either. To coincide with the 100-days countdown, the second phase of ticket sales was launched, opening up single-session tickets to all matches, including the semifinals and final. Admission to single sessions will range from $16 to $226, and can be purchased on WTAFinals.com.

ZHUHAI, China – All four semifinalists at the Huajin Securities WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai boasted perfect round-robin records, but someone’s 0 has to go on Saturday. Top seed Johanna Konta takes on the in-form Elina Svitolina, while Petra Kvitova meets home favorite Zhang Shuai.

Saturday, Semifinals

Stadium
[1] Johanna Konta (GBR #10) vs. [4] Elina Svitolina (UKR #14)
Head-to-head: Svitolina leads 1-0
Stat: Svitolina was the only semifinalist to drop a set during the round robin  
Nearly four years ago, Elina Svitolina met Johanna Konta in the quarterfinals of an ITF Circuit event in Israel. Both players were ranked outside the Top 100, but on that day it was the teenage Svitolina that comfortably prevailed, going on to collect the trophy a few days later. She would lift more significant silverware that year, announcing herself as one of the game’s brightest prospects by triumphing at the WTA event in Baku.

She has made good on this promise, developing her game under the watchful eye of coach Iain Hughes to the extent that she is knocking ever louder on the door of the Top 10. Last year the Ukrainian reached the semifinals in Zhuhai and after strong showings at recent outings in Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo it would be no surprise to see her go at least one step further this time around.

To do so she will need to get the better of Konta once more. However, this version of the Briton is a very different proposition to the one that stood across the net from her in their ITF days. Imbued with an on-court maturity and steely competitiveness matched by few of her peers, Konta has flown up the rankings over the past 18 months. Her round-robin victory over Samantha Stosur guaranteed she would finish the year in the Top 10, and judging by the way she dispatched Caroline Garcia to reach the semifinals her ambitions do not end there.

[2] Petra Kvitova (CZE #13) vs [WC/12] Zhang Shuai (CHN #28)
Head-to-head: tied 1-1
Stat: Zhang owns a 7-6 win-loss record against Top 20 players in 2016
Petra Kvitova can lay claim to being the WTA’s most impressive performer over the last few months of the season. Casting aside the inconsistency that blighted the first half of the season, Kvitova, who eased past Roberta Vinci and Barbora Strycova in her two round-robin outings, has now won 26 of her past 32 matches.

The highlight of this run was a second title in Zhuhai, and should she continue this rich vein of form on Chinese soil it will take a super-human effort to stop the Czech. Her next opponent, Zhang Shuai, will have a little extra help though, in the shape of an unashamedly partisan home crowd.

Desperate for a successor to Li Na, Chinese tennis has seen Zhang emerge as its unlikely standard bearer in 2016. Little more than 12 months ago, Zhang was contemplating retirement on the back of a dispiriting spell on tour. Sam Stosur talked her out of it and she has been on an upward trajectory ever since. In January she ended her long-running Grand Slam hoodoo by making it all the way through qualifying and into the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, building on this platform with credible showings in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing to leave herself on the verge of the Top 20.