With Elena Rybakina winning her Tokyo Open quarterfinal match against Victoria Mboko, Mirra Andreeva is out of the WTA Finals race. While on first read that might not seem particularly unusual, there are quite a few things about her missing out that are rather oddly specific.
For example, it’s the first time since 2012 that a player who has amassed over 4,000 points won’t play at the WTA Finals. Andreeva concludes the season with 4,319 points, which is only six points behind number eight on the list, Jasmine Paolini, who qualified for the event with 4,325 points.
The reasons why Andreeva won’t play at the WTA Finals are mostly due to her own performances. As we know, she started the season extremely well, winning Dubai and Indian Wells back to back. Those two events alone secured her 2,000 points, and since it was very early in the season, nobody really expected Andreeva not to make the event.
Unfortunately, her performances tanked as the season went on, as she never advanced past the quarterfinal of any event she played since that Indian Wells triumph. She made a couple of quarterfinals (Madrid, Rome, French Open, Bad Homburg, Wimbledon) but never further than that, which ultimately hurt her chances.
The last few weeks on the Tour were particularly bad as she lost in the fourth round in Beijing, and then the second round in Wuhan and the second round in Ningbo. Just one more win at any of these events likely would have secured her participation, but she didn’t get it done.
She could have possibly found salvation at the Tokyo event, but Andreeva didn’t have a visa and couldn’t get one on short notice, which meant that she couldn’t travel to the country and participate at the event.
In the end, the result is that Andreeva is out and Rybakina is in. But the Russian will still travel to Riyadh to compete in the doubles, as she and her compatriot Diana Shnaider proved one of the better doubles pairings this year, so there is a silver lining even if it’s not the best consolation prize.
What makes this absence even more interesting, besides the fact that it’s the first time since 2012 that a player with more than 4,000 points is missing the event, is the fact that this is only the second time ever that the difference between a qualified player and the next closest has been less than 10 points.
It only happened before in 2009, when Vera Zvonareva missed out by five points. Andreeva this year missed out only by six points and it’s proof of how competitive this year was on the Tour. Pretty unfortunate for Andreeva, but certainly a lesson to learn.
Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-Imagn Images
