The WTA announced the winners of the 2021 WTA Player Awards. International media representatives recognizes the best players in five categories: Player of the Year, Doubles Team of the Year, Most Improved Player of the Year, Newcomer of the Year and Comeback Player of the Year.
WTA Player of the Year: Ashleigh Barty
World Number 1 player Ashleigh Barty won the WTA Player of the Year Award for the second time in her career after achieving this feat in 2019. Barty claimed her second Grand Slam Trophy at Wimbledon and defended her Miami Open. She also won three more tournaments at the Yarra Valley Classic, at the Porsche Open in Stuttgart and at the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati. She secured the World Number 1 Ranking for the third consecutive year.
Barty beat Pliskova 6-3 6-7 (4-7) 6-3 in the Wimbledon final becoming the first Australian player to win the Championships title since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980 and the first top seed to win this tournament since Serena Williams in 2016.
Barty finished the year at world number 1 becoming the fifth player to finish the year as the number 1 player for three consecutive years after Stefi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams and Chris Evert.
WTA Doubles of the Team of the Year: Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova
Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova claimed the WTA Doubles Team of the Year Award for the second time in their career. The Czech team had already been recognized with this award in 2018. The Czech team have claimed their third career Grand Slam trophy as a team at Roland Garros.
This year they won three more titles at the Gippsland Trophy in Melbourne, the Madrid Mutua Open and the WTA Finals in Guadalajara.
Krejcikova went on to become the only player to qualify for both the singles and doubles tournaments at the WTA Finals in Guadalajara. Krejcikova and Siniakova won the WTA Finals doubles title, beating Hsieh-Su-Wei and Elise Mertens 6-3 6-4.
While both players held the number 1 doubles ranking, Siniakova ended the year as the WTA doubles year-end number 1 player.
WTA Most Improved Player of the Year
Barbora Krejcikova won the first three singles titles of her career in Strasbourg, at Roland Garros and Prague and reached the final in Dubai.
Krejickova started the 2021 season as a world number 65 in the WTA singles Ranking and climbed to a career-high world number 3.
Krejcikova has become the first Czech player to win the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen since Hana Mandlikova in 1981.
At Roland Garros the Czech player beat Russia’s Anastasya Pavlyuchenkova 6-2 1-6 6-4 in the final. Krejicikova is the third unseeded champion in the French capital in the past five years after Jelena Ostapenko in 2017 and Iga Swiatek in 2019.
Krejcikova has become the first Czech player to win the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen since Hana Mandlikova in 1981.
WTA Newcomer of the year: Emma Raducanu
Emma Raducanu was voted as the World Newcomer of the Year after a breakthrough 2021 season highlighted by her first Grand Slam triumph over Canada’s Leylah Fernandez in the final of the US Open, where she became the first qualifier to win a Grand Slam title. The British teenager did not drop a set throughout all ten matches.
In the championships match Raducanu beat 19-year-old Leylah Fernandez from Canada in all-teenage US Open final to win her first Grand Slam Trophy and her first tour-level title overall. It was the first women’s singles final between two under 20 players since the 1999 US Open match between Serena Williams and Martina Hingis.
Raducanu, who was ranked world number 150 when she won the US Open, is the lowest-ranked player to win the US Open title since an unranked Kim Cljisters won the first Major title of her come-back at the 2009 US Open.
She reached the fourth round at Wimbledon in her Grand Slam main-draw debut to become the youngest British woman to achieve this feat at the Championships. She reached the final at the WTA 125 in Chicago and the quarter final at the Transylvania Open in Cluj Napoca. She started the season ranked world number 343 and finished at a career-high world number 19.
WTA Comeback of the year: Carla Suarez Navarro
Carla Suarez Navarro was planning to end her career in 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic halted her farewell season. The Spaniard was diagnosed with Hodgkin limphoma in September 2020. She decided to end her career after winning her battle against cancer. Suarez Navarro pushed Sloane Stephens to three sets in the opening round at Roland Garros in her farewell appearance. She played another three-set battle against eventual champion Ashleigh Barty at Wimbledon and represented Spain at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals in Prague.