- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
She may not have enjoyed a dominant season by her standards, but on Sunday night Serena Williams capped off another consistent year by winning her third consecutive WTA Finals title in Singapore.
The world number one defeated Romania’s Simona Halep 6-3, 6-0.
Her path to the title didn’t prove to be that easy – it was Halep who handed the American her worst defeat for 16 years in the round-robin stage, winning 6-0, 6-2.
On either side of that embarrassing loss, after which Williams said that she played at junior level, were straight-sets wins over Ana Ivanovic and Eugenie Bouchard which saw Williams finish second in her group behind the Romanian.
She almost failed to reach the semi-finals – in fact, her hopes hinged on Ivanovic defeating Halep in straight sets. Fortunately, Ivanovic only won in three sets, meaning that the Serb was eliminated instead of Williams.
Williams also had to survive a late fightback from another former world number one, Caroline Wozniacki, to book her place in the decider. After dropping the first set rather easily, which included one of the most epic racquet-smashes of all time, she scraped through in a final set tiebreak.
By contrast, Halep qualified for the final by dropping only four games to Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska in her semi-final.
Halep may have entered the championship match in hot form, but it was the experience of Williams that proved to be the telling story as she won her fifth WTA Finals title in straight sets, coughing up only three games.
And while the women’s season may be over for 2014, the men are still going, with overnight results seeing Roger Federer and Andy Murray capture titles in Basel and Valencia, respectively.
Federer, still with a shot of overtaking Novak Djokovic as world number one before the year is over, thrashed Belgium’s David Goffin in less than an hour to win his hometown event for the sixth time, putting behind the disappointment of back-to-back final defeats to Juan Martin del Potro over the last two years.
Murray, on the other hand, repeated the dose on Spain’s Tommy Robredo by coming from five match points down, as he did in Shenzhen, to win his third title for the year in Valencia and continue a late-season form resurgence on the back of some poor results this year.
The Scot’s win boosted his chances of qualifying for next week’s ATP World Tour Finals (which will be previewed later this week), aided by news that world number three Rafael Nadal has withdrawn from the men’s finale due to injury.
The final make-up of the field for the ATP World Tour Finals, where Novak Djokovic is the two-time defending champion, will be determined at the Paris Masters which is being held this week.
Djokovic, Federer, Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic are among those who have already qualified for the event. The Serb, whose new wife last week gave birth to their first child, cannot earn any fresh rankings points for the remainder of this season as he is also the defending champion in Paris.
Early exits at either tournament, combined with strong performances from Federer, could see the Swiss re-inherit the world number one ranking he last held two years ago.
It would also silence the many doubters who believed that the Swiss would never return to the top of men’s tennis, after his ranking dropped to a 12-year low of number eight in January.
It’s possible that Federer, who has only lost twice (to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Toronto and Marin Cilic at the US Open) since turning 33 in August, could end this year as world number one. But can he do it, or will Novak Djokovic just hold on?
All that is set to be answered over the next fortnight.
Whether it’s aces or races, try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp for great odds and a great punting experience. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.