WTA Finals defending champion Iga Swiatek lands in Orange Group with Pegula and Gauff

Defending champion Iga Swiatek was on hand for the draw ceremony at the WTA Finals Riyadh presented by PIF to see how this year's groups shook out for the season-ending championships.

For the second straight year, the year-end No.1 ranking will come down to the final event of the season, as World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka looks to hold off No.2 Swiatek down the final stretch.

 
Singles Draw

Purple Group
[1] Aryna Sabalenka
[4] Jasmine Paolini
[5] Elena Rybakina
[7] Zheng Qinwen

Orange Group
[2] Iga Swiatek
[3] Coco Gauff
[6] Jessica Pegula
[8] Barbora Krejcikova

Tournament format: Round-robin play begins on Saturday, Nov. 2 at 3:30 p.m. on the indoor hard courts at the King Saud University Sports Arena. The top two finishers out of each group will advance to the semifinals on Friday, Nov. 8, with the winners advancing to the final on Saturday, Nov.9.

Top-seeded Sabalenka and the Purple Group will get underway on Saturday, with the Orange Group set to begin on Sunday.

Order of Play: Day 1

[3] Hsieh/Mertens vs. [6] Melichar-Martinez/Perez
[1] Sabalenka vs. [7] Zheng
[4] Paolini vs. [5] Rybakina
[1] Kichenok/Ostapenko vs. [8] Siniakova/Townsend

Order of Play: Day 2

[2] Dabrowski/Routliffe vs. [7] Chan/Kudermetova
[2] Swiatek vs. [8] Krejcikova
[3] Gauff vs. [6] Pegula
[4] Errrani/Paolini vs. [5] Dolehide/Krawczyk

In the 53rd staging of the Hologic WTA Tour's crown-jewel event, this season's eight best singles players and doubles teams will battle it out for a record-setting total prize money purse of $15,250,000, with an undefeated singles champion set to take home over $5 million.

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Iga Swiatek hires Wim Fisette as new coach

World No.1 Iga Swiatek has hired Wim Fissette as her new coach as she continues to prepare for next month's WTA Finals Riyadh.

"I'm happy to announce that Wim Fissette is joining our team," Swiatek posted on social media. "As you know, I'm preparing for the WTA Finals but my perspective is, as always, long-term, not short-term. I said many times that my career is a marathon for me, not a sprint and I'm working, operating and making decisions with this approach.

"I want to say that I'm very excited and looking forward to working with Wim. He seems to have a great attitude, vision and huge experience at a very top level of tennis. It's always crucial to try and get to know each other better but we're off to a good start and I can't wait to compete soon."

The news comes two weeks after the end of her three-year partnership with Tomasz Wiktorowski, with whom she had worked since the end of 2021 -- a period during which Swiatek won fiour of her five Grand Slam titles and ascended to World No.1 for the first time. Prior to Wiktorowski, Swiatek had been coached by Piotr Sierzputowski since 2016. Fissette will be her first non-Polish coach.

Swiatek will be the sixth sometime World No.1 player Fissette has coached. The 44-year-old Belgian has previously had stints with Kim Clijsters, Simona Halep, Victoria Azarenka, Angelique Kerber and Naomi Osaka. Fissette has coached Osaka in matches against Swiatek twice -- in the 2022 Miami final, which Osaka lost 6-4, 6-0; and in the Roland Garros second round this year, which Osaka lost 7-6(1), 1-6, 7-5 from match point up. Osaka announced the end of their four-year collaboration in September.

Swiatek has not competed since her quarterfinal loss to Jessica Pegula at the US Open, and her World No.1 ranking will be under threat from Aryna Sabalenka in the coming weeks.

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Well Wim was indeed the top choice. Makes perfect sense. 1 He was available having just split with Osaka. 2 He has so much experience working with world #1s and his calm temperament really fits the Iga team vibe. 

I really think he'll help Iga develop her skills as a player, make her use all the tools in her tool box and not be afraid to come to the net. 

Obviously big changes are not something that will happen over night, but I'm genuinely excited to see them work together at the WTA Finals in a few short weeks. 

And speaking of the WTA Finals it now seems that Iga will literally have to win every single match in order to take back the number one ranking (and Saba would have to lose 1 or 2). 

Even then it may not be enough and it's very likely Saba will keep the #1 ranking into next year.

Oh yeah, I'm posting this a bit late so Sabalenka is now officially the new world number one again as of this week. 

Thanks to probably the dumbest change in the ranking system in the sports history. 

A system that apparently penalizes a player for not losing badly enough in the mandatory 500 events (of which there are now unnecessarily 6 of), or something along those lines. 

Seriously the fact that the WTA had to release an article explaining it is evidence in itself. 

We went from 12 mandatory tournaments to 20 in one year and extended quite a few by 2 weeks. And this is how the ranking is calculated?. 

Your least bad mandatory event result?. 

Absolutely ridiculous.

I really hope it is corrected in the very near future, or literally no one will be able to understand how it works much less be able to follow it. 

However this season ends for Iga I just honestly cannot wait to see her back on court again. I just want to see her healthy, happy and thriving in a sport she loves and is so damn good at.

The tour is simply not the same without her around.

Iga Swiatek splits with coach Tomasz Wiktorowski

World No.1 Iga Swiatek has announced the end of her three-year coaching partnership with Tomasz Wiktorowski. Swiatek announced the news on Instagram on Friday.

"After 3 years of the greatest achievements in my career, together with my coach Tomasz Wiktorowski we decided to part way," Swiatek wrote. "I want to start with a big thank you and appreciating our work together."

Swiatek hired Wiktorowski, the long-time coach of former World No.2 at the end of the 2021 season. Under Wiktorowski's tutelage, Swiatek went on to capture four of her five Grand Slams, ascend to World No.1, and engineer the longest win streak of the 2000s, reeling off 37 consecutive wins in 2022. Together, they captured 19 of her 22 career titles and an Olympic silver medal this past summer.

Last year, Wiktorowski was voted the WTA's Coach of the Year by his peers.

"Coach Wiktorowski joined my team for three seasons, when I strongly needed changes and a fresh approach to my game," Swiatek wrote. "His experience, analytical and strategic attitude and enormous knowledge about tennis helped us to achieve things I've never dreamed of only a few months after we started working together.

"Our main goal was to become No.1 player in the world and coach Wiktorowski was the one who said it first. We aimed very high, we headed to every tournament with a clear goal to win it. Together with coach Wiktorowski we won many tournaments and 4 Grand Slams."

Swiatek withdrew from this week's China Open, where was a defending champion, and next week's Dongfeng Voyah Wuhan Open. This year, she has won four WTA 1000 titles this year at Doha, Indian Wells, Madrid and Rome, as well as her fifth major title at Roland Garros. She has qualified for her fourth consecutive WTA Finals in Riyadh, which will be played in November.

She confirmed in her post that she is in the midst of the process of hiring a new coach.

"Due to this important change on my team, I give myself a couple of weeks to start a cooperation with a new coach," she wrote. "I'm in the middle of first talks with coaches from abroad (non-Polish) because I'm ready to take the next step of my career. I will let you know when I make a decision."

According to Swiatek's post, the decision to end her work with Wiktorowski was mutual and amicable.

"Coach, THANK YOU, I wish you all the best," Swiatek wrote. "I know that you would like to rest after these 3 years of hard work and traveling a lot and spending some well deserved time with your loved ones and I hope you'll get what you need."

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This was quite surprise to fans and tennis personalities alike. I think for many the most surprising is the timing. 

On the one hand it would seem to make more sense to stay with the same coach till the end of the year and start fresh in 2025. 

On the other hand on the constant hamster wheel that is the tennis tour there is no good time for something like this. 

End of the season does give her more time to find someone and see how they gel in the off season before working on tour together. The spit certainly seemed mutual. 

As she states seems like her coach has had enough of the tour life and Iga herself is searching for some new energy and a new voice. 

Being very ambitious she's always working on improving her game and I guess on some level she felt like with Thomas she has gone as far as she could.

Seems like Iga realized that if she wants to do better at places like Wimbledon or Australia she has to be willing to make some big changes.

He helped her fulfill everything he promised chief among them being world #1 and then some. What they have done together is nothing short of extraordinary  19 titles in all (4 of them Slams). 

Wiktorowski really helped to unlock Iga's potential so as a fan I'll always be grateful for that. Having Iga at the top of the sport has made it better.

She'll now be working with a non-Polish coach (something she mentioned she might be ready for in 2 or 3 years). So in that sense she's definitely sticking to that timeline. Which will be fascinating.   

There's a lot of online speculation about who that person might be. Top 2 at the moment seem to be former coach of Osaka and Kerber, Wim Fisette. As well as Justine Henin's coach Carlos Rodriguez. 

All very intriguing choices. I guess the question will be how receptive the rest of the Iga team will be to allowing someone new to take the lead and bring in some changes.

It's understandable that Iga has chosen to withdraw from some tournaments to deal with it all (also mentioned being tired having played so many tournaments again this year). 

Selfishly I was hoping she she would play Wuhan because 2 months without Iga is just too long. And in my very biased opinion the tour is a bit boring without her in the mix.

Plus it also means the WTA Finals will be a real battle for world #1 again. A spot which Sabalenka could once again take if she were to reach the quarter finals of Wuhan. Muchova stopped her in Bejing but she's always had more success in Wuhan.