How WTA Finals became Fyre Festival of tournaments

Jamie Braidwood, The Independent

A beach resort in Cancun. The eight best women’s tennis players in the world. $9m and the world No 1 spot on the line. What could possibly go wrong? If you have followed anything of the WTA Finals this week, you will know the answer is pretty much everything. The prestigious event was won by Iga Swiatek on Monday night, crushing Jessica Pegula to capture the final tournament of the season and take the year-end world No 1 ranking. But in the years to come, the 2023 WTA Finals will be remembered as the tournament that launched a thousand memes, descending into high farce as tropical storms lashed in to the temporary arena by the Gulf of Mexico. Like the ill-fated Fyre Festival, the WTA Finals was a tournament that promised style and luxury, but descended into darkness and seemed to hit a new problem at every turn.

In the end, the decision to host an outdoor event during hurricane season, and a stone’s throw away from the coast, proved to be a completely comical one. That’s if the clear problems of disorganisation weren’t so serious. Aryna Sabalenka appeared to sum it up: “I’m dying laughing or maybe crying,” she posted. As the rain hit, Sabalenka, with a towel over her head, was left looking up pleadingly like Mother Teresa at the dark skies. Then there was Coco Gauff, gripping onto an umbrella as if her life depended on it, before giving up with a resigned sigh as it eventually buckled and snapped out of shape.

Players were fed up, matches suspended, and the final pushed back to Monday. Play was ruined at times by the swirling winds and challenging conditions. Water flooded the temporary venue and shivering ballgirls worked tirelessly to clear the courts. Yet, before the weather descended, players were already unhappy. Sabalenka said she felt “disrespected” after arriving in Cancun to find a court built on top of a golf course, which produced an uneven bounce. Given the conditions and how the Finals arrived in Cancun in the first place, it led to the WTA’s chief executive Steve Simon coming under increasing pressure. Martina Navratilova, the 18-time grand-slam champion, said it will be hard for Simon to survive the disaster of the past week.

“So so sad for all of us,” Marketa Vondrousova posted on Instagram and, as the Wimbledon champion left Cancun following the group stages having played three, lost three, it seemed heading home finally brought some relief. “We work hard all year to get to the Finals and in the end it’s just a disappointment,” Vondrousova said. “(The) stadium is not at all ready for the matches and to me it feels like the people from (the) WTA are absolutely not interested in how we who are supposed to play on that court feel. We do not feel that anyone listens to us and is interested in our opinions.”

Such strong words demanded a response from the WTA. Tour staff say they listen to players and incorporate feedback from them into their decision-making process. Simon held a meeting with the players in Cancun where he accepted responsibility for the conditions and conceded it was “not a perfect event”. The decision to host the WTA Finals outdoors in Cancun, he said, was “based on a number of complicated factors” but it is he who is now under mounting scrutiny.

For a start, naming Cancun as the host venue of the WTA Finals only two months before the start of the tournament on 29 October left Simon and the WTA open to accusations that they had made life more difficult for themselves. That the WTA was left still scrambling for a venue by the start of September goes back to a 10-year contract to stage the Finals in Shenzhen, China, which only produced one tournament in 2019. Then Covid hit, the contract was cancelled amid the WTA’s suspension of events in China following concern over the wellbeing of Peng Shuai, and the Finals have been moved around alternative venues ever since.