Top 10 Most Titles Won In 2016
Who took home the most silverware in 2016? Was it World No.1 Angelique Kerber, WTA Finals champion Dominika Cibulkova or Serena Williams? Find out right here!
Who took home the most silverware in 2016? Was it World No.1 Angelique Kerber, WTA Finals champion Dominika Cibulkova or Serena Williams? Find out right here!
Caroline Garcia saved a couple of match points to defeat World No.166 Natalia Vikhlyantseva and keep alive her hopes of retaining the Engie Open de Limoges.
WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen | Follow along with the French Open final between Serena Williams and Garbiñe Muguruza live on wtatennis.com!
HONOLULU, HI, USA – Top seed Zhang Shuai moved into the Hawaii Open semifinals on Friday with a hard-fought win over Samantha Crawford.
Watch free live streaming from Honolulu all week right here!
Breaks in the fifth game of both sets proved decisive as Zhang closed out a 6-4, 6-4 victory in an hour and 18 minutes.
Honolulu is the final event of a memorable year for Zhang that has seen her emerge as an unlikely standard bearer for Chinese tennis. 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, Beijing and Zhuhai to leave herself on the verge of the Top 20.
Meeting her for a place in the final will be No.6 seed Evgeniya Rodina, who posted a battling win over Sachia Vickery. Rodina, who won last week’s OEC Taipei WTA Challenger, was forced to dig deep against Vickery prevailing in a tense finale to triumph, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, in a fraction under two hours.
Another player on the up is CiCi Bellis, who confidently booked her final four spot by swatting aside Sara Sorribes Tormo, 6-1, 6-1.
Bellis recently broke into the Top 100 for the first time after back-to-back titles on the ITF Circuit, and broke serve six times against Sorribes Tormo to extend her winning sequence to 12 matches. Next she faces Jacqueline Cako, who advanced when Sabine Lisicki retired with a shoulder injury.
Madison Keys has ended her coaching relationship with Thomas Hogstedt. Keys’ agent Max Eisenbud confirmed the split to WTA Insider. No new coach has been announced.
The news comes on the heels of Keys’ career-best season, which saw her qualify for her first BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global and finish the year ranked No.8.
“Thomas and I have a rich history of working together with Li Na, Maria Sharapova and most recently Madison,” Eisenbud told WTA Insider. “His work with all three of these girls speaks for itself. Coaching on the women’s tour is not easy and sometimes these relationships just don’t work out, nothing more than that.”
Keys and Hogstedt, who also coached Caroline Wozniacki and Eugenie Bouchard, began working together in April and their collaboration netted immediate results. Keys made the biggest final of her career at the Italian Open in Rome and won her second career title at the Aegon Classic in Birmingham, England, launching her into the Top 10.
Their success continued over the summer hardcourt season, as Keys made another big final at the Rogers Cup in Montréal and the semifinals at the Olympic tennis event, before making the second week at her sixth straight Slam at the US Open.
Keys is currently scheduled to begin her season in Melbourne at the Australian Open.
News of the split follows two other high-profile coaching changes, as US Open finalist and World No.6 Karolina Pliskova ended her long-time work with Jiri Vanek and No.14 Elina Svitolina ended her partnership with Iain Hughes.
With the 2016 French Open officially in the books, the WTA Insider team looked back at the entertaining final that saw new World No.2 Garbiñe Muguruza stun 21-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams for her first major title, and look ahead to the grass court season and all the intriguing storylines that abound heading into Wimbledon.
Can Muguruza replicate last year’s run to the final at the All England Club and avoid the dreaded post-major slump? Will Serena capture the elusive and record-tying 22nd Grand Slam title at her favorite major tournament? How will Victoria Azarenka recover from her injury-addled spring? Can Timea Bacsinszky and Simona Halep turn around disappointing Roland Garros compaigns into grass court success?
All this and more on the latest episode of the WTA Insider Podcast:
Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or on any podcast app of your choice and reviews are always helpful, so if you like what you’ve heard so far, leave us one. You can also get new episode alerts by following us on Twitter @WTA_Insider.
May was packed with plenty of amazing shots – we narrowed it down to the five best.
In the end it was Simona Halep, who showed off her quick hands and quality anticipation in her third round match against Timea Bacsinszky at the Mutua Madrid Open.
Staring down the barrel of Bacsinszky’s fearsome backhand, Halep dove for a forehand volley and the gamble paid off, helping her go on to win the match and capture her second career Premier Mandatory title.
Click here to watch all of May’s finalists.
Final Results for May’s WTA Shot Of The Month
1. Simona Halep (70%)
2. Irina-Camelia Begu (12%)
3. Serena Williams (7%)
4. Garbiñe Muguruza (6%)
5. Carla Suárez Navarro (5%)
2016 WTA Shot of the Month Winners
January: Caroline Wozniacki
February: Agnieszka Radwanska
March: Agnieszka Radwanska
April: Monica Niculescu
How it works:
Five shots are selected by wtatennis.com
Winner is then determined by a fan vote on wtatennis.com
Who posted the best Throwback Thursday photo of the year? Who had the most hilarious post of all? Click here to vote!
As an athlete, top 25 doubles star Alla Kudryavtseva has long been in pursuit of physical excellence, but holds intellectual acument in equal standing, earning an online Bachelor’s of Science in Communications, her second degree and first at Indiana University East.
“I’ve always loved to learn,” she told WTA Insider from LaGuardia Airport on Monday. “I’m always trying to read and learn something, so I thought, ‘I’m doing all these things. Why don’t I try to get a degree?’
Kudryavtseva previously earned a degree in physical education back in Moscow, but was inspired to return to school by then-doubles partner Anastasia Rodionova, who is also at IU East studying business administration.
“Communications is a diverse degree, one that you can use in many different areas. I’m not quite sure what I want to do when I stop playing, so it just seemed like a good fit. Everything you do these days is with communications. Physical education was interesting at the time and very applicable to what I do as an athlete. I found this degree very applicable as well when it came to things like negotiations and persuasion, or even things like dissecting the news and what we see in media.
“It has been a really interesting journey and I learned a lot.”
“Alla was one of our finest students in the Communication Studies program and within the entirety of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences,” noted Ross Alexander, IU East’s Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. “Her professors consistently lauded her stellar work, professionalism, and the global perspective she brought to all her courses. She is among the very best we have at IU East.”
The former World No.56 had more than her share of setbacks in her final two semesters – inucrring an ACL injury just before finals – but perservered to receive her diploma on Tuesday at the Richmond campus’ Student Events and Activites Center. Through her various academic endeavors, this will be the first to have any proverbial pomp and circumstance.
“It has been a pleasure to host Alla on her first trip to the Richmond campus,” said IU East Chancellor Kathryn Cruz-Uribe. “We are honored to present her with her diploma. As an alumna, she will join a network of over 9,000 IU East graduates,” Cruz-Uribe said.
“I just turned 29, and from middle school to university, I’ve never been to an actual graduation ceremony,” Kudryavtseva admitted. “I always came to the office, picked up the diploma, and thank you very much!
“It’s difficult to be a student athlete; it takes a lot of discipline and commitment. No one is there to push you, so you’ve got to push yourself, and make sure you’re leaving appropriate time for assignments and reading. When grades start rolling in, that also adds stress, but luckily I’ve been a straight-A student, so I didn’t have to worry about anything.”
Kudryavtseva joins a growing cohort that includes former World No.1 Venus Williams, who became the first WTA player to graduate under the tour’s agreement with IU East. Current students include Olympic Gold medalist Monica Puig, Sloane Stephens, and Arina Rodionova. Also earning her diploma later this month is Irina Falconi; the former Georgia Tech standout won her first WTA title earlier this year in Bogota, and credited Lisa Grattan of the Women’s Tennis Benefits Association (WTBA) as one who encouraged her to return to the online classroom.
“Once I heard about how good of an opportunity it was, I realized I had to jump on it,” she explained in an email. “I was motivated to go the moment I heard about it! I know that having a degree is something important to me, so I knew I wanted to get it done.”
Like Rodionova, Falconi is also studying business administration, a field the American saw as a natural selection for one already balancing the business of athletics.
“I like to think that I am already a running business. I wanted to really learn everything there is to know about running a sound business, making budgets, and marketing myself.”
A second set of deadlines can prove daunting to the already-overloaded athletes, but Falconi found a way to make the grade through her tenure at IU East.
“When I started the program four years ago, WiFi wasn’t everywhere and wasn’t reliable, so there were a few late nights where I had to drive or walk to a coffee shop to make sure I submitted something before the deadline.”
Both Falconi and Kudryavtseva stressed the importance of education, arguing it helped give them a better sense not only of their future, but also their present.
“My capstone project was a 40 page paper on athletic retirements, and that was a very interesting topic to choose,” Kudryavtseva said. “I learned about all the difficulties athletes face: loss of identity, and how unprepared many are for what comes next. An athlete’s network can affects them a lot, because it gets to a point where everyone they know is somehow involved in their sport.
“That made me evaluate my own circle of friends and I realized just how many people I know have played or do play or are somehow connected to the WTA or even ATP tour or college tennis. When I was younger, I thought I’d want to disconnect from the tennis world when I retired, but getting older, I don’t think I want to. You learn so much over a 15 year career that I couldn’t have this level of expertise in any other field; it’d be a waste if I completely disconnected.”
“I know that tennis won’t last forever, so I knew that having a degree in my back pocket would benefit me in the long run,” Falconi added. “I think that some players may be a bit intimidated by the idea of online schooling, but if you set your mind to it, you can accomplish it!”
All photos courtesy of Getty Images.
Ricoh Open Final Centre Court, noon
Watch live action from Sunday’s ‘s-Hertogenbosch final on WTA Live powered by TennisTV!
[3] Kristina Mladenovic (FRA #32) vs. [6] CoCo Vandeweghe (USA #43)
Head-to-head: Vandeweghe leads 3-0
Final Fact: Vandeweghe has hit 22 aces en route to the final.
Much has been made of American tennis’ new-found love affair with clay. However, many of the country’s contingent on tour still long for the return to the faster surfaces.
Leading this vanguard is CoCo Vandeweghe. A booming serve, a penchant for taking the ball early and a willingness to move up the court make the Californian’s game ideally suited to the hard courts on which she was raised and the grass courts she has grown to love.
The latter is a surface that has brought her much joy, too; in 2014 at ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Vandeweghe came through qualifying to lift her maiden WTA trophy, while at Wimbledon she left a trail of seeds in her wake to reach the 2015 quarterfinals.
On Sunday she returns to the ‘s-Hertogenbosch final, where she will take on Kristina Mladenovic. An accomplished doubles player – she recently won the Roland Garros title with Caroline Garcia and in 2014 reached the Wimbledon final alongside Timea Babos – Mladenovic’s all-court game makes her a danger on grass, as she proved in reaching last year’s Birmingham semifinals.
Mladenovic was impressive in upsetting friend and top seed Belinda Bencic in the semifinals, but will be hard pushed to derail the Vandeweghe juggernaut. Apart from in the second round against Nao Hibino, Vandeweghe is yet to drop serve and has barely looked like dropping a set. The American also has history on her side, having won all three of her previous meetings with Mladenovic, at Dubai, Osaka and in qualifying during her title run at ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
Road To The Final
Kristina Mladenovic
First Round: d. Yaroslava Shvedova, 64 63 (1:32)
Second Round: d. [Q] Natalia Vikhlyantseva, 57 63 64 (2:02)
Quarterfinals: d. [Q] Elise Mertens, 75 63 (1:23)
Semifinals: d. [1] Belinda Bencic, 26 63 64 (2:04)
CoCo Vandeweghe
First Round: d. [WC] Indy de Vroome, 62 64 (1:16)
Second Round: d. Nao Hibino, 62 63 (1:07)
Quarterfinals: d. Evgeniya Rodina, 62 62 (0:59)
Semifinals: d. Madison Brengle, 64 62 (1:12)