RIYADH — The season-ending WTA Finals will be held in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh from 2024-2026, the women’s tennis body said.
“To have a women’s tournament of this magnitude and profile is a defining moment for tennis in Saudi Arabia. The WTA Finals has the power to inspire far beyond the sport, especially for our young girls and women,” said the Saudi sports minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal Al-Saud according to Reuters.
Italy’s Sara Errani, meanwhile, emerged from a break-filled match against Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 victory to seal a place in the quarter-finals of the Copa Colsanitas in Bogota, Colombia.
Errani lost her serve six times, but she broke Sorribes Tormo eight times. Neither player had an ace on the clay-court surface, and Sorribes Tormo finished with nine double faults to Errani’s six.
In other second-round action, eighth-seeded Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia escaped with a 7-6 (4), 6-7 (5), 6-3 win over Mexico’s Renata Zarazua.
Romania’s Irina Bara rallied past Brazil’s Laura Pigossi 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-4, and Great Britain’s Francesca Jones routed Colombia’s Yuliana Monroy 6-1, 6-2, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, two former World No.1 players had differing fortunes at the WTA Charleston Open, following a six-hour rain delay.
Caroline Wozniacki, who held the World No.1 ranking for 71 weeks, lost to No.15 seed Anhelina Kalinina for the second time in a two-week span. On the green clay of Charleston, Kalinina won 6-2, 6-3 in 1 hour and 20 minutes.
No.12 seed Victoria Azarenka, though, was a winner. Azarenka, who held the World No.1 ranking for 51 weeks, zipped past Elisabetta Cocciaretto 6-1, 6-2.
Kalinina, the World No.33 from Ukraine and a 2022 Charleston quarter-finalist, has been a thorn in Wozniacki’s side over the past month.
Two weeks ago, in their first career meeting, Kalinina toppled Wozniacki in three sets in the second round of Miami.
In that clash, Wozniacki held a match point at 5-4 in the second set, but Kalinina came all the way back to win 5-7, 7-5, 6-4.
Kalinina, who reached a WTA 1000 final on clay at Rome last year, had a much more straightforward path to another win in Charleston.
The Ukrainian made it all the way to 6-2, 5-2 before she even faced a break point. She did cede that service game, but immediately struck back with a break to attain victory.
Despite Wozniacki’s incredible success at Charleston — she was the 2011 champion, the finalist in 2009 and 2019, and is one of only eight players to have accumulated 20 career match-wins at the tournament — she was unable to exact revenge on Kalinina.
This marks the first time in her seven appearances at the event that Wozniacki has failed to reach the Charleston quarterfinals.
“[In Miami] we played 3 hours and 20 minutes, something like that, and it was very tough,” Kalinina said.
“She had match point, I was really down the whole match. … It was a totally different surface, clay, compared to hard courts. So I think today maybe I used my stronger sides better than in Miami.”
Concurrently, Azarenka, who is ranked No.26 after a run to last week’s Miami semifinals, had little trouble dismissing 56th-ranked Cocciaretto in their first career meeting.
Elsewhere, for the second consecutive tournament, Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina got past Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki, prevailing 6-2, 6-3 in the second round at Charleston.
Kalinina, the 15th seed, lost the lone break point she faced while taking advantage of five of her 11 break opportunities.
Fourth-seeded Daria Kasatkina of Russia defeated the United States’ Ashlyn Krueger 6-3, 0-6, 6-1, and 10th-seeded Emma Navarro cruised 6-1, 6-1 in an all-US matchup against Katie Volynets.
Belarus’ Victoria Azarenka, seeded 12th, crushed Italy’s Elisabetta Cocciaretto 6-1, 6-2, and Australia’s Astra Sharma upset 16th-seeded Lesia Tsurenko of Ukraine 6-4, 6-0.
Fifth-seeded Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil, sixth-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia and ninth-seeded Veronika Kudermetova of Russia were in action Wednesday night.
