!Sam
By TW Contributing Editor Andrew Burton
Morning, all.
The WTA Championships in Istanbul get underway today, with matches between Petra Kvitova and Vera Zvonareva, Caroline Wozniacki and Agnieszka Radwanska, and Maria Sharapova and Samantha Stosur opening the round-robin stage.
The first four players make up the Red group; Sharapova and Stosur are joined by Li Na and Victoria Azarenka in the White group. You can expect a lot of Istanbul coverage on TW in the next few days from a long time WTA maven.
There are three weeks before we'll know the eight who'll make it to the ATP World Tour Finals in London. This week, St. Petersburg and Vienna host 250 tournaments: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Juan Martin Del Potro are the two top seeds in Vienna, and Gilles Simon and Janko Tipsarevic are the highest ranked players in St. Petersburg (Simon is already out after a three-set loss to Mannarino).
Five players have already qualified for London (Djokovic, Nadal, Murray, Federer and Ferrer). A lot of players could theoretically claim one of the last three spots, but Tomas Berdych, Mardy Fish and Tsonga, who currently occupy the 6, 7 and 8 slots in terms of points earned in 2011, are in the strongest positions to do so. Tsonga has earned 2790 points, more than 400 points ahead of Nicolas Almagro in the 9th position.
I've been taking a look at the qualification level for the ATP year-end championships over the last decade. I'll likely have more to say on this in a later post, but it's striking that in recent years the number of points required to make the final eight has come down. In 2009, Fernando Verdasco made it to London with 3300 ATP Ranking Points -- I reckon that the number eight player after Paris may have a lower total.
I'd be interested to know who you think will make it to the WTF, as well as who you think will do well in Istanbul. Will Stosur and Li snap out of their post first-major funks? Will the "Caro Generation" sweep, or will veterans take the top slots? Who'll join the ATP Five, and who'll rule the WTA Eight? As always, enjoy today's tennis!