The WTA has released the names of the finalists for the 2015 WTA Most Improved Player Award. The list features Timea Bacsinszky, Belinda Bencic, Johanna Konta and Karolina Pliskova.
Timea Bacsinszky suffered a serious foot injury during the 2011 spring after a very promising junior career in which she reached the semifinal at three Grand Slam tournaments in 2004 and 2005. She stopped playing tennis to work in restaurants and bars. In May 2013 Timea received an e.mail stating that she was eligible to compete in the qualifying round at the Roland Garros. With no practice the Swiss player lost the first round match but found again the passion for tennis. She hired Dimitri Zavialoff, the former coach of Stan Wawrinka and pulled off a big upset in Wuhan when she beat Maria Sharapova. At the start of 2015 she won 21 of her first 23 matches including two titles in Acapulco and Monterrey. She reached the quarter final at the Roland Garros and the semifinal at Wimbledon before reaching the final in the WTA Premier Mandatory in Beijing.
Belinda Bencic made a major breakthrough in 2014 when she became the youngest player to reach the quarter finals in a Grand Slam tournament since Nicole Vaidisova in 2006. The 18-year-old Swiss rising star enjoyed a great grass season in which she reached the final at s’Hertogenbosch before winning her first title in Eastbourne and reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon. She became the youngest player to beat Serena Williams since Maria Sharapova at the 2004 WTA Championships before beating Simona Halep in three sets (after the Romanian player retired when she was down 0-3 in the third set). Bencic, who is caoched by her father and by Melanie Molitor (the mother of Martina Hingis), has ended the 2015 season as the World Number 14 after finishing runner-up to Agniszka Radwanska in Tokyo.
Karolina Pliskova enjoyed a great season in which she won in Prague and finished runner-up in five finals in Auckland, Dubai, Birmingham, Stanford and at the Elite Trophy in Zhuhai (losing against Venus Williams). She has ended the season as the World Number 11 and contributed to the win of the Xzech team in the Fed Cup final against Russia last week-end in Prague
Johanna Konta moved up from inside the top 150 to break the top-50. The British player of Hungarian origin came through the qualifying round to reach the fourth round at the US Open before coming within two points of beating Venus Williams in the quarter finals in Wuhan.
Anna Karolina Schmiedlova won two WTA titles in Katowice (beating Camila Giorgi) and Bucharest (beating Sara Errani), reached the Rio de Janeiro final (losing to Errani) and won four matches against top-20 players reaching the quarter finals in eight tournaments. In Wuhan she scored her first top-10 win against Caroline Woznaicki after coming back from a set and a break down.
