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Caroline Garcia, who began the year as World No. 74, played excellent tennis this season and was rewarded with the WTA Finals, the most prestigious title of her career till date.
The 2022 WTA Finals ended on Monday, with 29-year-old Garcia coming out on top. She won four titles in the four finals she played in, including the WTA Finals, Cincinnati Open, Poland Open, and Bad Homburg Open. In the final match of her most successful season so far, Garcia took on Belarus' Aryna Sabalenka, beating her in straight sets to win the year-end championships.
18-time Grand Slam champion Chris Evert reacted to Caroline Garcia's win and congratulated her by saying she had "worked hard for it," further urging her to keep moving forward.
"You worked hard for it…keep going," Evert tweeted.
The French player received $1.57 million in prize money for her victory over Sabalenka in the final, which included $1.24 million in winnings and a base participation fee of $110,000.
"As we say, if you don't move forward, you move backward" - Caroline Garcia after her WTA Finals title
In the final match of the year-end championships, Caroline Garcia defeated Aryna Sabalenka 7-6(4), 6-4 in one hour and 41 minutes, increasing her total number of singles titles to 11. She will finish the season as World No. 4, having won her fourth title of the year.
The two players held their serves throughout the first set, following which Garcia took the opener after Sabalenka committed two double faults in the tiebreak. The Frenchwoman broke early in the second set and held on to her nerves afterwards to script a phenomenal win.
Following her match, Caroline Garcia discussed her struggles and shared her approach to constantly improving on the Tennis Channel.
"I think it's super important to keep improving. As we say, if you don't move forward, you move backward. That's not something we want to do in the team. Obviously, today was a very solid match. There were a few mistakes here and there but not so many negative points. You always want to challenge yourself first in this sport and then you have another challenge against the others," Garcia said.
Garcia admitted that even though she and her team were committed to executing their goals, they never anticipated the season to end on such a positive note.
"I think this year was so many lessons, so many experiences. It started okay, I got some wins here and there but couldn't manage to back them up. But I had my team behind me and we were really focused on how we wanted to play and it wasn't paying off for some time. But they told me that if I kept going in that way, it will pay off one day. We didn't think it was going to pay that much but I definitely liked it," she added.
