The Top 8 singles players and doubles teams of the 2024 Hologic WTA Tour season have started to descend on Saudi Arabia for the season-ending WTA Finals Riyadh presented by PIF -- with defending champion Iga Swiatek leading the way.
Now ranked No.2, the season-ending tournament will be Swiatek's first match action since a US Open quarterfinal loss to Jessica Pegula on Sept. 4. Since then, the five-time Grand Slam singles champion, who lost the World No.1 ranking to Aryna Sabalenka on Oct. 21, split with her coach of two-plus years, Tomasz Wiktorowski, a month after that New York loss, and announced the hiring of Wim Fissette -- former coach of Victoria Azarenka, Angelique Kerber, Naomi Osaka and others -- two weeks after that.
Fissette was present for Swiatek's first training session on the court at King Saud University on Monday, with two other fixtures in the Pole's team -- sports psychologist Daria Abramowicz and hitting partner Tomek Moczek also on-site.
Swiatek sent an enthusiastic message to the third, her physiotherapist Maciej Ryszczuk, in her first dispatch from Riyadh: "We're waiting for you."
Since announcing Fissette as her new coach on Oct. 14, Swiatek has been keeping fans abreast of her training block with regular social media updates of her "grinding" -- as she captioned one carousel post on Instagram last week -- on the practice court and in the gym.
But the World No.2 isn't the only one already in the Kingdom.
Joining her on the practice courts on Monday was World No.5 Elena Rybakina, who also has not played since the US Open due to a combination of injury and illness. The Kazakh will look to better her result from her debut at the WTA Finals last year, where she was eliminated in the round-robin phase of the competition.
Also on the courts were the doubles pair of Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez, were the eighth and final team to qualify for Riyadh. The American-Aussie pair sealed their spot on Oct. 18 and are set to appear together for a second time after finishing as runners-up in 2023.
Other qualifiers were making their way to Riyadh on the eve of Tuesday's official draw ceremony. World No.4 Jasmine Paolini, who this week tied Francesca Schiavone for the highest position by an Italian in PIF WTA Rankings history, and her doubles partner Sara Errani shared a snapshot of themselves in-flight on Instagram -- even if the elder of the two Italians was a little "camera shy."
Paolini's qualification in both singles and doubles marks the fourth straight year that's been achieved by at least one player, following Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula (2022-23) and Barbora Krejcikova (2021).
Elsewhere, another doubles competitor -- former World No.1 Hsieh Su-wei -- was finishing her last-minute preparations with an elaborate (and topical) manicure, featuring intricate detailing of the Grand Slam tournaments and its trophies.
The WTA Finals begins on Nov. 2 and runs through Nov. 9.
