Sabalenka and Rybakina end up in the same group; Swiatek looks at Gauff

Defending champion Iga Swiatek was in attendance at the draw ceremony of the WTA Finals presented by PIF in Riyadh to see how this year’s groups for the season-ending championships fare.

For the second year in a row, the year-end No. 1 ranking depends on the final event of the season, as world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka looks to hold off No. 2 Swiatek in the home stretch.

Road to the WTA final: Sabalenka | Swiatek | Gauff | Paolini | Rybakina | Pegula

This is how the singles and doubles draws went:

Single 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

Double draw

Green group
[1] Lyudmyla Kichenok and Yelena Ostapenko
[3] Hsieh Su-Wei & Elise Mertens
[6] Nicole Melichar-Martinez & Ellen Perez
[8] Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend

White group
[2] Gabriela Dabrowski & Erin Routliffe
[4] Sara Errani & Jasmine Paolini
[5] Caroline Dolehide & Desirae Krawczyk
[7] Chan Hao-Ching & Veronika Kudermetova

This is how the draw takes place: The top two seeds are placed on the opposite groups. Players/teams are then randomly drawn from each subsequent pair of seeds, so that seeds 3 and 4, seeds 5 and 6, and seeds 7 and 8 are in opposite groups.

Tournament format: Round-robin play begins at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 2, on the indoor hard courts at the King Saud University Sports Arena. The top two finishers in each group will advance to the semi-finals on Friday 8th November, while the winners will advance to the final on Saturday 9th November.

The 53rd edition of the Hologic WTA Tour’s crown jewel event will see this season’s top eight singles players and doubles teams compete for a record-breaking total prize money of $15,250,000, with one undefeated singles winner taking home over $5 million.