The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) is the governing body of professional women’s tennis globally. The women’s tennis season features the four Majors or Slams that are the most elite events on the women’s circuit. The next best tournament in hierarchy is the WTA Finals or the Year-ending Championships.
The concept of having an year-ending competition between the best women players of the season dates back to 1972. The WTA Tour was then known as the Virginia Slims Circuit. From 1984 to 1998, the final of the tournament was played in a best-of-five sets format.
The tournament features eight best players and eight best doubles teams who play against each other. The qualification is based on the number of points the players accumulated during the season. In singles the points of a player from the four Majors, the four WTA 1000 events and points from six other tournaments are taken into consideration. There is no such rule in doubles, and players qualify based on the total points they accumulated in WTA sanctioned events across the year.
The qualified players are divided into two groups of four players each. Each player plays the other in a round-robin format. The top two players from each group advance to the semi-finals and later, the finals. The winner of the tournament is awarded a maximum of 1500 ranking points. The calculation of the number of points awarded is based on the number of wins that a player records throughout the tournament.
The tournament’s first edition was held on clay courts in Boca Raton. Between 1974 to 2000, the tournament was played on carpet courts. Since then, all events have been played on hard courts. Countries who have hosted the WTA Finals include USA, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Singapore, Qatar, China and Mexico. The total prize money of the competition as of 2023 is a whopping USD $90,00,000.
Martina Navratilova holds the record of winning the most year-ending championship titles in both singles and doubles. She has won 8 singles and 13 doubles titles. On five of these instances, she won both singles and doubles in the same edition of the tournament.
