“It’s terrible for our sport,” Elina Svitolina ridicules the WTA Finals management as the tournament continues to meet with player’s disapproval

Elena Rybakina recently paid a visit to Odesa, Ukraine, to meet her grandmother.

“It’s terrible for our sport,” Elina Svitolina ridicules the WTA Finals management as the tournament continues to meet with player’s disapproval

Elina Svitolina - Steve Simon (Image via: Open source)

The WTA has been subject to a lot of criticism following the events that transpired in the 2023 WTA Finals that were recently held in Cancun. The courts where the matches were played were alleged to not be up to par, and in fact, the stadium was not even fully constructed until the day when the event started. 

Elena Rybakina, Ons Jabeur, and Marketa Vondrousova were some players involved in the tournament who criticized the organization heavily for this. Elina Svitolina has now also joined them to take a dig at the WTA. 

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I saw the court was not ready, I don’t know why the WTA wanted to host it in Cancun. It’s a shame for the best eight players in the world to be playing in these conditions, it’s terrible for our sport to be honest.
Elina Svitolina said via Daily Mail

Iga Swiatek defeated Jessica Pegula in the final of the WTA Finals to clinch the title. She absolutely demolished the American player, won the match 6-1, 6-0, and registered an exemplary win.

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With this, the Polish international has also replaced Aryna Sabalenka as the World No. 1 player, and she will be the one to finish this year as the year-end World No. 1. This is something that Iga has been aiming to achieve since the US Open when she lost her No. 1 position to Aryna Sabalenka, and she has finally been able to achieve that. 

However, despite a successful end to the tournament, it cannot be denied that the WTA was largely at fault for whatever went wrong in the WTA Finals. Steve Simon, the current chief executive of WTA, has in fact released an official statement in which he said that WTA takes responsibility for the ill-management of the WTA Finals. 

Elina Svitolina discusses the condition of her hometown in Ukraine 

Elina Svitolina recently paid a visit to her hometown of Odesa in Ukraine to see her grandmother who is 85 years old. She will also be meeting with her friends, family, and former coaches in Odesa.

Elina Svitolina
Elina Svitolina (Source: CNN)

She added:

My grandmother seems to be doing fine but Odesa is quite a dangerous place right now because they are attacking the port, there are alarms or bombs there pretty much every night. I suppose people are getting more used to living in these conditions now after so long, so she has got more used to it.

While there, she saw the current condition of Ukraine firsthand and talked about that in her interview as well. 

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