The women’s and men’s year-end grand finales will be held the next two weeks, beginning with the WTA Tour Championships in Madrid this week.
When the draw for the $3-million (U.S.) event, featuring the top-eight women, was done on Saturday, it came out uncannily similar to the U.S. Open. At Flushing Meadows, five of the top six favourites were in the top half of the draw – Justine Henin, Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic, Serena Williams and Venus Williams – with Maria Sharapova in the bottom half.
In Madrid, with the players divided into two groups of four for the initial round robin phase, the top-seeded Henin again finds herself in tough with Jankovic, Serena Williams (Venus is not playing while she tries to get to the root of a dizziness problem) and Anna Chakvetadze.
Second seed Svetlana Kuznetsova heads a group that includes Sharapova (short on match play and in questionable condition because of her chronic shoulder ailment), Ivanovic and Daniela Hantuchova.
“I saw the groups,” Lindsay Davenport said yesterday at the Bell Challenge in Quebec City. “It looks like one is incredibly strong compared to the other. It’s amazing the luck of the draw (three Grand Slam quarter-finals in a row) with Serena and Justine so many times this year.”
Henin is the defending champion and, even if she does not win, she appears set for a long run at No. 1. She leads Kuznetsova – 5930 points to 3750 in ranking points.
In 2008, she has no points to defend at the Australian Open because she missed it this year in the aftermath of her split from husband Pierre Yves Hardenne. In fact, she really has nothing substantial to defend until late March when she reached the final of Sony Ericsson Open in Miami – losing to Serena after having two match points.
About the earliest anyone could plausibly catch up to Henin would be in June after Roland Garros, where she won last year for the fourth time.
Next week, the ATP’s $4.45 million Masters Cup will be staged in Shanghai. The final eight was determined by last week’s BNP Parisbas Masters in Paris and will include Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Nikolay Davydenko, Andy Roddick, David Ferrer, Fernando Gonzalez and Richard Gasquet.
The alternate player will be David Nalbandian and he may well get in because American doubles specialist Bob Bryan was quoted last week as saying that Roddick was only “50-50” about playing because he is now focusing mainly on the Davis Cup final versus Russia in Portland, Oregon, from November 30 to December 2.
Stat-of-the-week: Several years ago, when the Bell Challenge event in Quebec City was offering $170,000 (U.S.) in prize money, it cost tournament organizers $265,000 Canadian to pay the competitors.
Needless to say with this year’s prize money of $175,000 (U.S.), the current favourable exchange rate has greatly helped the event’s bottom line.
