Daria Kasatkina criticises WTA rule change that resulted in Wimbledon winner qualifying for WTA Finals
Daria Kasatkina is not a fan of the new WTA Finals rule that reserves one qualifying spot for a Grand Slam winner who finishes outside the top eight in the WTA Race.
As per the 2024 WTA Tour Rulebook, the players who occupy the top seven places in the WTA Race qualify automatically for the season-ending event.
Then it states that one place is left open for “the highest-ranked current-year Grand Slam winner who is 8-20 on the Race to the Finals Leaderboard and who is not already qualified”.
If there is no major champion ranked between ninth and 20th who failed to qualify for the WTA Finals then the final spot will be allocated to the player ranked eight or lower.
Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova was a beneficiary of the rule as she was ranked 12th at the cutoff time for the WTA Finals in Riyadh, but her title at the All England Club ensured she qualified.
And the Czech has made the most of her opportunity as she has reached the semi-final after beating Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff during her group matches.
Emma Navarro was the player to miss out on qualification as she finished ninth in the Race.
Kasatkina, meanwhile, travelled to Riyadh as one of the alternates as she finished ninth in the WTA Race and she had to fill in for the injured Pegula in the final group match against Iga Swiatek.
The world No 9 suffered a 6-1, 6-0 defeat to Swiatek, but she lamented the new rule that only came into effect this year.
“In my opinion, the WTA Race is the WTA Race. So it’s about how many points you earn during the year,” Kasatkina said.
“If you win a Grand Slam, you already got what you achieved. You won the Grand Slam, points, money, glory, everything.
“Here it’s the WTA Race. So I think in this scenario, it has to go by points.”
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Despite her emphatic win over Kasatkina, Swiatek failed to qualify for the semi-finals with Krejcikova joining Gauff in the last eight.
The five-time Grand Slam winner admitted after the match that she had no idea that qualification for the semi-finals was out of her hands.
“Honestly, I don’t think it matters, like we go out on court to win every match anyway. So I wasn’t thinking about that. I didn’t know that this is the case,” Swiatek revealed.
“I’m professional enough to always give 100 per cent no matter what the stakes are.”
The Pole added: “If I’m not going to play semis, then I’ll have a couple of days off, and I can’t take back time and play better in the match that I played against Coco. I won two matches in the group, so I guess I did everything I could to be there.”
