Serena Williams may silence some of her remaining critics if she caps a tremendous comeback year by regaining the title at the WTA Championships which start in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Having won Wimbledon, the US Open and an Olympic singles gold medal for the first time in 2012, Williams is unofficial favourite to deny top seed Victoria Azarenka and second-seeded Maria Sharapova at the women’s season-ending event.
The 31-year-old Williams has achieved all this despite the blood clots in her lungs which endangered her life and contributed to a 12-month absence during 2010 and 2011.
Nevertheless dissent has been articulated, notably at the influential magazine Sports Illustrated, at suggestions that the American legend should win the WTA Player of the Year award for a third time in five years.
Williams’ commitment to the tour is being questioned again after she missed two of this year’s four premier mandatory tournaments – Indian Wells in March and Beijing last month.
Inevitably these absences have brought reminders of withdrawals which caused criticism in previous seasons.
As the WTA’s four-year roadmap campaign places special emphasis on player commitment – to avoid upsetting spectators and sponsors – Williams’ non-appearances may be regarded as relevant.
The roadmap has helped the tour’s prize money to rise 51 per cent, its player participation to improve 34 per cent, and the achieving of record attendances and television coverage at some tournaments.
It may therefore also be a significant statistic that the top-ranked Azarenka, the Australian Open champion, has a superior record of matches played (75) and victories totalled (67) this year.
However, Williams, who has won 43 of her past 46 matches.
Certainly Williams has made a huge difference to the profile of women’s tennis, but she does not have enough time left to climb back to become the year-end world No.1
Who gets that accolade will be decided over the next few days by Azarenka, who has been the ranking-topper for most of the year, and Sharapova, the former No.1 who achieved a career grand slam by winning the French Open in June.
Azarenka only needs to win two group matches to finish top, but if the Belarusian were unaccountably to win only one of these three round-robin encounters, Sharapova could snatch it away from her by taking the title.
In Sunday’s draw, Azarenka gained an early chance to make up for her heartbreaker in the US Open final when Williams was drawn into her round-robin four, the Red Group, along with Li Na and Angelique Kerber.
This left Sharapova with a slightly less difficult looking quartet, even though the White Group includes Kvitova, as well as Agnieszka Radwanska and Sara Errani.
For the first time in the WTA Championships’ 40-year history, the players come from eight different countries.
Kvitova, the former Wimbledon champion, is Czech, Radwanska, the Wimbledon runner-up, is Polish, and Li, the former French Open champion, is Chinese.
The two debutants, Kerber, a Wimbledon semi-finalist, and Errani, the French Open runner-up, are German and Italian respectively.
Australian Samantha Stosur has travelled to the Turkish city as the tournament’s first alternate.
