Final calculation: who will win the last tournament of the year in Riyadh

The final WTA tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia from November 1-8. Russian tennis players failed to qualify for the top 8 singles for the third year in a row. Although Mirra Andreeva was very close to this, she finished on the ninth line and will be the first reserve (another of our tennis players, Ekaterina Alexandrova, who had the best year of her career, will come to Riyadh as the second reserve). But we have three representatives in the main draw of the doubles tournament: Veronika Kudermetova will play in a duet with Elise Mertens in the group of Martina Navratilova, and Mirra and Diana Schneider in the group of Liezel Huber.

A task for Arina

It should be noted that last year Daria Kasatkina went to the final as the first reserve and even played one match in the group, replacing the injured Jessica Pegula. But three years ago, Daria qualified for Fort Worth from the eighth place. A native of Tolyatti, who has represented Australia since the end of March 2025, won against Coco Gauff, but after losing to Caroline Garcia (the winner of the final 2022) and Ige Sventek, she could not get out of the group.

Only Maria Sharapova won the final of our matches in 2004, beating Serena Williams in the final. In the group, Maria was stronger than compatriots Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva, and in the semifinals she beat another Russian, Anastasia Myskina. Sharapova also played in the final of the final in 2007 (defeated by Justine Henin). Zvonareva reached the final match of the WTA Finals in 2008, losing to Venus Williams.

Coco Gauff won the final last year. This time, the American, who finished the championship race in third position, is not among the favorites. Experts and bookmakers give the most chances to the first racket of the world Arina Sobolenko. In 2025, the representative of Belarus won the US Open, was in the finals of the Australian Open (lost to Madison Keys) and Roland Garros (lost to Gauff), reached the semifinals of Wimbledon. Arina is by far the most stable on the tour, but there are two things that confuse her. Firstly, she has played only one tournament since New York (in early October in Wuhan), so her current form raises questions. Secondly, Arina's final tournaments are not working out yet — there was only one final in 2022 (last year she stumbled at the semifinal stage).

The second favorite is Sventek, who won the final in 2023. Although the shape of the Igi is also not ideal. In the Asian series, she was able to take the title in Seoul (beating Alexandrova in the final), but then failed in Beijing and Wuhan. Amanda Anisimova, who has been playing very strong tennis on various surfaces all year, and Elena Rybakina, who has gained amazing form by the end of the year, can surprise. It was the successes of the representative of Kazakhstan in Ningbo and Tokyo that left Mirra Andreeva out of the tournament. Although at the end of September there was practically no doubt that the 18-year-old Russian woman would go to Saudi Arabia.

In addition to Mirra's weak performance after the US Open (she won only two matches in three tournaments), a bureaucratic moment also played a role. Before the start of the tournament in Tokyo, Andreeva beat Rybakina by 14 points. Elena needed two wins to beat the Russian, and in the end she was able to defeat the Canadians Leila Fernandez and Victoria Mboko. The question arose: why didn't Andreeva go to the capital of Japan to play in the fight for the final? The answer turned out to be banal: Mirra was having problems with her visa.

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Repeat 2022

Now Andreeva Jr. can only hope that someone will withdraw from the tournament. However, she will definitely play her matches in Riyadh in doubles. Together with Diana Schneider, they will make their debut at this tournament and may well make a big name for themselves. In the group stage, they got the second "seeded" Katerina Sinyakova and Taylor Townsend, Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Rutliff (the third seed), as well as the Hungarian-Brazilian duo Timea Babos and Luisa Stefani. Our girls have already played with all these couples this year.

Another Russian, Veronika Kudermetova, will play in the other group. Together with Belgian Elise Mertens, they are "seeded" at number four. Their opponents will be Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini (1), Su-Wei Xie and Alyona Ostapenko (6) and Eisha Mohammed and Demi Schurs (8). Kudermetova and Mertens have already won the final in Fort Worth in 2022.

After the victory in the USA, the Russian-Belgian duo suddenly broke up. Veronica played in an alliance with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Lyudmila Samsonova, Ekaterina Alexandrova and Zhan Haoqing. With the latter in 2024, they qualified for the final, losing in the semifinals to Townsend and Sinyakova. This year, Kudermetova performed in pairs with Anastasia Potapova, Ena Sibahara and the same Zhan Haoqing. It didn't work out with the representative of Taiwan this time. The pair were eliminated in the first or second round, so Kudermetova paired up with Mertens again in Madrid for the first time since 2022. It worked. In the Spanish capital, they reached the final, and a week later they played in the decisive match of the Rome Masters. They failed to win these tournaments, but less than two months later they won Wimbledon. At the US Open, the Russian-Belgian duo reached the semifinals, so their stability at major tournaments is impressive. Why not repeat the success of three years ago.