Reigning champion Ashleigh Barty, WTA World number 2 Aryna Sabalenka and this year’s Roland Garros champion Barbora Krejicikova are the first three players to qualify for the 2021 WTA Finals, to be held in Guadalajara.
Barty has won a tour-leading five titles across all three surfaces this season at the Yarra Valley Classic in Melbourne, in Miami, where she defended her title, the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, her second Grand Slam title at Wimbledon and at the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati. The Australian player is at the top on the Porsche Race to the WTA Finals and qualifies for the season-end finale as the defending champion. She claimed the WTA Finals Billie Jean King Trophy in 2019 in Shenzhen.
Aryna Sabalenka will make her singles debut at the Billie Jean King Trophy WTA finals. She has become the first player from Belarus to qualify for the WTA Finals in singles since Victoria Azarenka, who reached the final in 2011 and qualified for the last time in 2013. Sabalenka has won two finals from three finals, including the season-opener in Abu Dhabi and at the Madrid Mutua Open, and reached the final in Stuttgart losing to Barty. She also reached her first two semifinals at Wimbledon and at the US Open.
Barbora Krejicikova will be the first player to play both singles and doubles tournaments since Karolina Pliskova in 2016. The Czech player reached her first tour-level singles final since Nurnberg 2017 at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. She clinched two titles on French soil in Strasbourg and at Roland Garros. She reached the fourth round at Wimbledon and won a title on home soil in Prague. She made her top 20 debut at number 15 and reached the world number 10 and reached two consecutive quarter finals at Cincinnati and at the US Open.
Krejcikova will team up with Katerina Siniakova in their consecutive WTA Finals in the doubles tournament. Krejicikova and Siniakova reached their best result when they finished runner-up in 2018. The Czech team also qualified for the first edition held in Shenzhen in 2019. They are bidding to become the first Czech team to clinch the WTA Finals Martina Navratilova Trophy. They have claimed three doubles titles at the Gippsland Open in Melbourne, Madrid Mutua Open and at Roland Garros (their third Grand Slam doubles title as a team after Roland Garros and Wimbledon in 2018. They reached the final at this year’s Australian Open and won the 2021 Olympic doubles medal in Tokyo 2021.
Shuki Aoyama and Ena Shibahara have become the first Japanese doubles players to qualify for the WTA Finals in doubles since Ai Sugiyama in 2008, when she reached the semifinal with Katarina Srebotnik.
