A primer on the players' chances of qualifying for the WTA year-end championships

Click here for the men's race to the ATP Masters Cup in Shanghai

By Kamakshi Tandon; statistical calculations provided by Robert Waltz

The male models who will serve as ballboys – and frivolous talking points – at the WTA year-end championship in Madrid were decided a while ago. At the well-publicized auditions in May, Maria Sharapova helped handpick a few, testing which ones were quick on their feet by asking them questions like, "who's your favorite tennis player?"

A slow-witted candidate who gave someone else's name was quickly turfed.

But who those ballboys will be carrying for and picking up after isn't yet known – to be guaranteed a berth at the year-end championships, a player must be among the top eight finishers in the WTA's points race, which ends November 5.

Here are the current top 10 in the race to Madrid and the current top 10 in the world rankings:

Quite a few differences. Well, that’s because the rankings measure results from the past 52 weeks and the race measures results only from the beginning of this year, right? Right – but not entirely right. There’s another difference – in the rankings, players count only their best 17 tournament results; in the race, they can count them all.

That makes it even harder to predict who’s going to qualify for the women’s year-ending championships than for the men’s – a WTA player can sign up for a bunch of events and gain ground with quantity rather than quality. But with only six weeks left and a maximum of 1400 points still up for grabs, things get a little easier.

The WTA has announced that this year's Grand Slam winners – Justine Henin-Hardenne, Amelie Mauresmo, and Maria Sharapova – are in. The numbers say Svetlana Kuznetsova is also in, though it hasn’t been made official yet. That leaves four spots, and this is how the contenders are looking:

 UPDATE  Kuznetsova officially qualifies - more

Qualified	Will Qualify	Good shot	Decent shot	Needs a miracle
Henin-Hardenne Mauresmo Sharapova	Kuznetsova	Clijsters Hingis Dementieva	Petrova Schnyder Safina	(A small one)   Vaidisova Jankovic Myskina Ivanovic (A large one ) Everyone else

Below is an individual breakdown of each player's chances.

MAPPING OUT THE RACE

Currently, the last four spots belong to Kim Clijsters, Martina Hingis, Elena Dementieva, and Nadia Petrova.

But they shouldn’t be resting easy just yet. Nadia Petrova has only about 1600 points so far and that means, in theory, just about anyone in the Top 100 could still pass her. In practice, though, only someone in the Top 40 or higher could.

That’s still quite a few contenders, but not many players outside the top 20 play well enough on indoor surfaces to be a serious threat.

Their chances depends a lot on where they stand relative to the rest of the field. Kuznetsova is nearly 600 points ahead of Clijsters, a lead too big for her to get overtaken for one of the eight Madrid spots.

If Clijsters wasn’t struggling with injury she would be almost a lock as well. Still, she and Hingis are just about certain. Dementieva will qualify if she puts up her usual results.

Petrova, not surprisingly, is the most vulnerable of the Top Eight but has a big enough lead on Patty Schnyder, Dinara Safina and Nicole Vaidisova that she could be okay – barring more losses like her second-round defeat in Luxembourg this week, of course.

Assuming there are no withdrawals from Madrid, those four players have real chances to earn the last two spots. But given the injury-riddled state of the WTA these days, none of them should be counting out their chances of getting in – even if only as an alternate.

The big points come at bigger events like Moscow or Zurich, but there are also a lot of smaller events where players can add to their totals.

HANDICAPPING THE FIELD

What the players need to do to clinch their spots, and how likely they are to do it: