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The 2019 WTA Finals wrapped up on Sunday, bringing down curtains on the professional 2019 WTA Tour. The year end championships saw the top eight women's singles players square off for the Billie Jean King trophy.
Ashleigh Barty emerged as the winner after she defeated Elina Svitolina in straight sets to clinch her first WTA Finals title. Svitolina failed to defend her title and ended the year without a title win.
This year's tournament saw players getting injured, replacements coming in, upsets taking place and new records created. We take you through the five big talking points of the tournament and what that means for the next year's WTA Tour.
#5 Ashleigh Barty wins on her debut
Ashleigh Barty, playing in her first WTA Finals emerged as the champion after defeating Elina Svitolina 6-4, 6-3. It was Barty's first win against Elina in the six encounters between the duo, and the 23-year old took the match in one hour and 27 minutes to lift her fourth WTA title of the year, equalling Karolina Pliskovas's record. Barty won the 2019 Miami Open, 2019 Italian Open and the 2019 Roland Garros earlier this year.
The current World No.1 became only the second Australian to win the WTA Finals after Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who previously won in 1974 and 1976. Barty also became the seventh player to win the trophy on her debut and on her way to the win, she ended Elina Svitolina's nine-match winning streak at the WTA Finals.
Barty also became the first player since Serena Williams to end the year with the No.1 ranking and the WTA Finals Trophy. Ashleigh will now go on to play for her national team at the 2019 Fed Cup against France. Fed Cup finals will be played on the 9th and 10th November.
#4 Elina Svitolina ends the year title-less
Defending champion Elina Svitolina entered the final match against Barty as the favourite. The Ukrainian was the only player to have won all her group matches to top the Purple Group. Not only that, she won all the three matches in straight sets, showing complete dominance over her opponent. On her way to the finals, she only dropped one set during her semifinals match against Belinda Bencic.
However, Barty raked an easy win over Elina to stop the latter's winning streak at the WTA Finals. This resulted in Svitolina not winning a single WTA title in 2019. It was the first time since 2013 that Elina had finished her year without a title win.
The 25-year old reached the semifinals of the Wimbledon and US Open earlier this year but failed to make it to the semifinals. Similar was the outcome at the Indian Wells, Dubai Open and Qatar Open.
#3 Injury scare for the players
This edition of the year end championships saw two players making an early exit due to injury. The first one was Naomi Osaka, who withdrew on the second day of the tournament due to a right shoulder injury. She managed to pick up a win from her first match against Petra Kvitova and was to face Ashleigh Barty in the second match. However, the Japanese decided not to proceed further in the tournament and was replaced by Kiki Bertens.
Bianca Andreescu, the youngest player at the 2019 edition was the second player to bow out due to a knee injury. The US Open 2019 champion retired during her group match against Karolina Pliskova and called it quits as the injury aggravated.
Belinda Bencic also retired midway through her semifinal clash due to a stretched hamstring. She also did not shy away from complaining about the court at Shenzhen, calling it 'not ideal' for the player and terrible for movements.
#2 Doubles champions defend their title
Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic successfully defended their WTA Finals doubles title after defeating Hsieh Su-Wei / Barbora Strýcová. The Hungarian-French duo won all their group matches to reach the semifinals, where they defeated Samantha Stosur / Zhang Shuai.
It was the second title win at the year-end championships for both of them as a pair, while Timea lifted the trophy for the third straight year. She partnered with Andrea Hlaváčková in 2017 to win the trophy for the first time. Babos and Mladenovic became the sixth team to successfully defend their title at the WTA Finals.
They went on to defeat Chan Hao-ching / Latisha Chan, Anna-Lena Grönefeld / Demi Schuurs and Elise Mertens / Aryna Sabalenka in the Red Group matches that saw them top the table.
Mladenovic will end the year ranked second, while Babos will finish third as per the year-end rankings.
#1 Huge prize money
The WTA Finals 2019 handed out a total prize money of $14m, the most till now at any tennis event. Ashleigh Barty received a sum of US$4.42 million, the biggest amount of prize money in any of the men's or women's professional tennis tournament. The previous was $3.85m, given to the singles winner at the 2019 US Open.
Elina Svitolina won $2,400,000 for taking part in the finals and having won all the three group matches. Apart from her prize money, she received a bonus of $1.1m for winning the semifinals.
Doubles Championship winners Mladenovic and Babos claimed the prize money of $1,000,000. This year's total prize money saw the amount double up from last year's $7m.
With a flat participation fee of $385,000 given to every qualified player, every player got $305,000 after every round-robin match win. It will be interesting to see what the jump will be in the following year.
