#3 Garbine Muguruza
The young Spaniard came into prominence by reaching the Wimbledon final last year which helped her enter the top 10 for the very first time in her career. However, Muguruza did not have the best of starts to 2016 as she had to retire in her opening match of the Brisbane International due to plantar fasciitis which was followed by a disappointing third-round exit at the Australian Open. Muguruza had a couple of inconsistent performances before reaching the semi-finals of the Italian Open.
She followed this with a French Open triumph by defeating reigning champion Serena Williams in the final in straight sets, thus becoming the first Spanish female Grand Slam champion since Arantxa Sanchez Vicario’s third French Open title in 1998. As a result, she achieved a career-best world ranking of No.2.However, she disappointed at Wimbledon, losing in the second round to qualifier Jana Cepelova and had another disappointing outing at the Rio Olympics where she was beaten by eventual gold medalist Monica Puig in the third round. Prior to the US Open, she had a good showing at the Cincinnati Masters where she reached the semi-finals.
However, the US Open went horribly for the 23-year old as she was beaten in the second round of a Grand Slam for a second successive time. Following the US Open, Muguruza reached the quarter-finals of the Toray Pan Pacific Open before being defeated in the second round of the Wuhan Open by former World No.1 Jelena Jankovic.
Based on this year’s WTA tour performances, Muguruza is ranked sixth and has 3568 points in her kitty, which means she only needs to get another 707 points to qualify for Singapore. However, Muguruza will have to improve a lot on her game if she is to reach the WTA finals as she hasn’t been very consistent in the past few months.
