With the end of the regular WTA season upon us, it’s time for the yearly awards. There are five main categories – Player of the Year; Doubles Team of the Year; Most Improved Player of the Year; Newcomer of the Year; and Comeback Player of the Year. It’s no surprise that Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski have been nominated in the doubles category after their stunning season culminated in their victory at the WTA Tour Finals. Although their only other victory was in the 250 event in Nottingham, they also reached the finals at Wimbledon, Miami, Eastbourne and Toronto, as well as the semi-finals at the Australian Open, Dubai, Osaka and Tokyo.
The other nominees, as you would expect, are the teams which won the biggest titles – Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens (Australian Open, Indian Wells and Birmingham); Lyudmyla Kichenok and Jelena Ostapenko (Brisbane, Eastbourne and US Open, and runners-up at the Australian Open); Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend (Wimbledon); Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini (Rome, Linz and the Olympic Gold Medal); and Anna Danilina and Irina Kromacheva (Wuhan, Guadalajara and Hua Hin).
Newcomer of the Year is a category devoted to players who have entered the top 100 for the first time, and Lulu Sun was always going to be an obvious choice as a nominee. Although she didn’t win any WTA tournaments, coming closest when runner-up at the 500 event in Monterrey, her electrifying run from qualifying to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, where she beat world number eight Zheng Qinwen in the first round, made the tennis world sit up and take notice.
At Monterrey she didn’t face a single player outside the top 100, yet her fellow nominees for this award faced only a handful of top 100 players between them in the runs to their respective 250 titles. Sun also had the biggest rankings jump of any nominee, moving from 214 to 40 during the year, and maintaining that level despite playing only one more match in the season after being injured at the US Open.