Elina Svitolina in the second round robin match of the WTA Finals 2018, Singapore
Elina Svitolina in the second round robin match of the WTA Finals 2018, Singapore | Jimmie48 Tennis Photography

WTA Finals 2018 | Elina Svitolina only has to win a set to qualify for the semi-finals

By Ros Satar,

  • Caroline Wozniacki [2] v Elina Svitolina [6]
  • H2H: Svitolina leads 3-1
SINGAPORE – Elina Svitolina must feel good about her chances to advance to the semi-finals for the first time with two wins under her belt at the WTA Finals.

 

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Caroline Wozniacki [2] v Elina Svitolina [6] | H2H: Svitolina leads 3-1

Heading into the last if the round-robins Elina Svitolina finds herself fin the driving seat against defending champion Caroline Wozniacki.

Svitolina has been one of the revelations of this year’s tournament. Last year she joined the field with a lot of confidence but after Caroline Garcia came from a set and a break down to hand Svitolina a second loss, she cut a very dejected figure and it looked as though the occasion had completely overwhelmed her.

Not so this year – she snapped a seven-match losing streak against a former Finals champion Petra Kvitova, and she fought hard against Karolina Pliskova to put herself in pole position.

In essence, all Svitolina needs to do is win a set – but we have seen in the past what effect that can have on a player. In what was essentially a dead rubber, all Angelique Kerber had to do in 2015 was win a set against Lucie Safarova and a spot in the semi-finals was hers. The knowledge was enough to send the German into a tailspin as she lost in straight sets and was bounced out of the tournament.

Svitolina was having none of it when she was told that she was all but in:

“I’m not gonna think about it going into the next match, because I don’t want to have this kind of thing in my head. I have to play my next match.

“Last year I was going into this tournament with confidence. This time it was different, because my second part of the season wasn’t that good as last year. So it’s two completely different situations.”

Caroline Wioznaicki in the second round robin match of the WTA Finals 2018, Singapore
Caroline Wioznaicki in the second round robin match of the WTA Finals 2018, Singapore | Jimmie48 Tennis Photography

She will come into this with a lot of confidence with a solid bit of confidence, having beaten Wozniacki twice in finals last year, but she was handed a sobering lesson in their round-robin match last year where the Dane lost just two games.

Somehow though this is a more determined looking Svitolina, and she has emerged out of this group as the more confident of the four. She is every bit as consistent as Wozniacki, and while she likes to play a more aggressive game, the slowness of the court has shown she can defend strongly too. She has solid ground-strokes and a decent enough serve, and much like Wozniacki, she can cover the court well, often hitting very accurate shots on the run.

She has been the more consistent by far, this tournament, but Wozniacki’s performance and level of fight against Kvitova was impressive but Svitolina’s confidence is high.

Prediction: Svitolina in three sets.

 

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