Victoria Azarenka said Monday that she hopes the WTA Finals will find a “deserving” home, after more than one years of instability after the girls’s tennis business enterprise suspended all Chinese tournaments.The former international primary and -time Australian Open champion also urged an declaration in this year’s venue quickly, to permit for higher marketing of the excursion’s flagship occasion.
The season-ending championships feature the pinnacle eight singles players and pinnacle 8 doubles teams. They had been initially supposed to be staged in China’s southern metropolis of Shenzhen each 12 months for 10 years, starting with the 2019 version.
The deal with Shenzhen turned into record-breaking and the inaugural 2019 showpiece presented singles champion Ashleigh Barty $4.Forty two million – which changed into the highest-ever prize cash awarded to a player at any tennis event across both the guys’s and ladies’s excursions.
But the pandemic and the fallout from the disappearance of Chinese player Peng Shuai – which led to the WTA suspending operations in China – have supposed that the excursion Finals have not back to Shenzhen seeing that 2019.
Peng, the previous doubles world primary, has not been seen outdoor China due to the fact first making, after which retreating, accusations of sexual attack towards a excessive-ranking professional.The WTA championships were cancelled in 2020 after which determined a temporary home in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2021, and Fort Worth, Texas in 2022.
The WTA Finals in Fort Worth witnessed sparse crowds and have been best introduced overdue September – less than two months before the occasion.
“We want something this is deserving of the Finals,” Azarenka, an active member at the WTA Player Council, told newshounds on the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Monday.
“Last couple of years with any such quick statement, certainly no time for advertising – for my part – it is been undervalued.”
Azarenka said the Guadalajara version featured “unreal” crowds and believes future stagings of the prestigious match should get hold of the identical welcome.
But she said there was “no described location right now”.
“There’s nevertheless talks about China. There’s nothing definitive.”
This season marks the fiftieth anniversary of the WTA and Azarenka spoke approximately the want for evolution on the tour, caution that some “humans from the older generation” appear to be retaining again the sport.
