What was it like in Singapore? What was good – what was bad? And: Should the WTA Finals stay here? Because in 2019 things could go on somewhere else.
By Florian Goosmann from Singapore
Finally, a few words on Singapore. Nice place! Great clean city, lots of greenery, two botanical gardens, all safe. A lot of construction sites, okay, but the new houses have to come from somewhere. The most absurd is the Players’ Hotel, the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which consists of three towers with a huge ship planted on its roof, which serves as a swimming pool. Caroline Wozniacki wants to go in for a few more rounds tomorrow.
It’s also hot, a good 30 degrees during the day and 25 degrees at night, humid, mostly cloudy. Which you don’t complain about when you look at Germany. The problem: It’s freezing cold at the same time. Namely in all buildings, for example the shopping malls, which are located here at every corner, because individual shops are almost extinct. Buy you something to eat? Take a shortcut? Off through the mall, preferably in a winter jacket.
With all the thoughts of environmental destruction and global warming, one could also cool down to “only” 22 or 23 degrees Celsius instead of minus 500, one would save quite a lot of energy, people would not catch cold and would be able to wear short clothes throughout. It would all be easier. But it is the same in the USA. And come to an American with such absurd ideas.
The tournament itself? Okay. Good games, bad games, as you would say on RTL eve. A lucky and deserved winner with Caroline Wozniacki. Part very nice doubles. The Singapore Indoor Stadium was sometimes half-full, sometimes three-quarters full. The fans who came to visit were thrilled. It’s a pity that the training grounds were very hidden, a good ten minutes, around a thousand corners. And for fans to visit only on some days. What was a pity, professional training can still be observed in detail. Especially doubles, too, you can learn a lot as a club coach and player.
Of course, it’s often a trivial trick, but on days off it’s also practical preparation. Darren Cahill, coach of Simona Halep, practiced after the Wozniacki debacle mainly winners and played with Slice on the backhand to imitate her opponent Svitolina (without success).
And Sascha Bajin, the former Williams hitting partner who is now training Caroline Wozniacki, was happy to finally be allowed to play kick-buys as preparation for the Garcia match (with success). Oh yes, super nice guy by the way, the Sascha (an interview will be available in the next few days).
The players were also good to act, but the press conferences of Caroline Garcia were outstanding. The Frenchwoman hadn’t expected to play in Singapore herself, and even after her semi-final defeat against Venus Williams, she gave many good answers despite initial disappointment. Unlike Williams, but we already had it (and it didn’t get much better during the week). A British colleague asked WTA chief Steve Simon whether the WTA could do something about it, and Simon said,”Not much, she was there, she answered,”he said, feeling a bit resigned himself. Williams convinced him that a fighting heart like the 37-year-old doesn’t have all of them.
A few more words about Simona Halep. She finished first in the world rankings in 2017, and of course the online trolls came back immediately. No Grand Slam tournament won, worst number 1 ever and so on. What a load of bullshit. Halep has played the most consistent tennis of all for 52 weeks. And being the world’s best in something is great – who of us can claim that?
Roger Federer, one of the few people who can actually do that, agrees:”Whoever is number 1 deserves it. Halep should not be taken away for a second – or someone else who has fulfilled his life’s dream (…) It’s not always all about Grand Slams:” Halep, who was honored on Sunday, was pleased with Federer’s words:”I feel proud that Roger Federer speaks so much about me,”she said.
Oh, yes, Switzerland. Martina Hingis stops, for the third time already. And even was surprised that no one has ever been able to blurt this out before. Neither the tennis colleagues nor the Swiss journalists who were here knew it, because “we wanted to wait until you said that”, they said in a nice chat with Hingis in the press centre. So it is still possible to keep something secret in this day and age. You just have to want to.
By the way, you don’t know how things will go on in Singapore, even if you want to be here. The finals are fixed here until 2018, after that Manchester, Prague, St. Peter’s and St. Peter’s want to follow. Petersburg and Shenzhen. A decision will be made in April, said Steve Simon at the WTA’s end-of-year press conference, at which a lot of “excited” was shown, such as the three new number 1 players this year (Pliskova, Muguruza, Halep), the two new major winners (Ostapenko, Stephens), the more than 2,300 match transmissions and the training sessions via live stream. And about the cooperation with Porsche and the corresponding Porsche Race to Singapore,”which has enabled us to write a story for the WTA finals over the year”, as WTA President Micky Lawler emphasized.
People are currently trying out a lot of things at WTA in general, also with Facebook double broadcasts, but one number surprised: The Sports Business Journal has found out, Lawler says, that the age of TV viewers has recently dropped from 56 to 52 years, 41 percent of viewers are under 34. Is tennis back in the kids’ game? It would be great, wouldn’t it?