Elise Mertens and Su-Wei Hsieh in a group of the top seed in the WTA Finals, our compatriot also books for the singles tournament | Tennis

On Monday evening, the draw for the WTA Finals took place in Guadalajara, Mexico, the tournament featuring the top eight singles players and doubles teams for 2021. Elise Mertens (WTA 16), along with Taiwan’s Su Wei Hsieh, serve as one of the favorite titles in the tournament doubles. They were placed in a group with top seed Krejcikova-Siniakova, Chilean-American duo Guarachi-Krawczyk and Mexican-Canadian mixologist Olmos-Fichman. The top two teams from each group will play the semi-finals on Saturday and that should include Mertens and Hsieh, this year’s winners of Wimbledon and Indian Wells. The other, more homogeneous group includes the Stosur-Zhang, Schuurs-Melichar, and the second-ranked Aoyama-Shibahara.

Ahead of the event, our compatriot, who is in the Masters for the third time, also received the good news that she has been selected to be one of the two reserve spots for the singles tournament. The 25-year-old Hamonzi finished only 15th in the race to Guadalajara, but a few cancellations, and the fact that she was already there anyway, made her a suitable candidate to fill in should one of the game’s champions get injured. In the past, the “alternates” received a bonus of $125,000 (107,800 euros) to be on standby at the site, but with the last-minute WTA Finals moved from Shenzhen to Guadalajara due to the coronavirus pandemic, the expected prize pool of more than 12 million euros reduced to 4.3 million euros. Thus, Mertens’ surplus salary may be less.

In the singles, due to the absence of such top players as Barty, Osaka and Williams, there are chances for almost every participant to win the prestigious title. Sabalenka (WTA 2), Sakkari (WTA 6), Swiatek (WTA 9) and Badosa (WTA 10) make up the pool of Chitzén Itzá, Krejcikova (WTA 3), Pliskova (WTA 4), Muguruza (WTA 5), and Kontaveit (WTA 8). They play against each other in a ‘Teotihuacán group’.