Stosur in the hunt for Singapore
A strong run at next fortnight's US Open could put Sam Stosur in prime position for a berth in the prestigious eight-player WTA Finals field in Singapore.
New York, NY, USA, 25 August 2016 | Matt Trollope
Could Sam Stosur be among the field at this year’s WTA Finals in Singapore?
According to the current standings, she’s in with a good shot.
The Aussie is currently in 13th place on the Road to Singapore, a tally of points where all players start the season in January on zero and accumulate points from then until the WTA Finals, this year held on 23-30 October.
The top eight players qualify for a place at the prestigious season-ending event, the WTA’s flagship tournament and often regarded as the game’s “fifth Grand Slam”.
The ninth- and tenth-ranked players also head to Singapore as alternates.
> view the Road to Singapore standings
“Now that I know I’m in that vicinity, I really want to push for finishing top 10 and getting to Singapore and being part of that more elite group again,” Stosur said.
“I’ve been to the other ones (editions of the WTA Finals). By all accounts I hear it’s pretty nice in Singapore. I’ve been there before but not for that, so yeah, it’d be a nice way to finish the year no doubt.”
Stosur qualified for the tournament – back then known as the WTA Championships – when it was held in Doha in 2010 and Istanbul in 2011, on both occasions reaching the semifinals. She was an alternate at Istanbul in 2012, playing two round-robin matches.
The Queenslander was as high as ninth in the standings after this year’s French Open, where she made the semifinals.
But after a slightly lacklustre North American hardcourt season – she fell in the second round at Montreal and Cincinnati and was upset in the Washington DC quarterfinals by Jessica Pegula – she has slipped a few rungs.
Her third-round finish at the Rio 2016 Olympics did not carry any ranking points.
Yet a strong showing at next fortnight’s US Open – where she is a former champion and last year reached the fourth round – would help boost her position once more.
“We’ll see how we go the next few months. Once you have (played) Montreal and Cincinnati, usually you kind of have a bit of idea about what you want to be doing (schedule wise),” she said.
“Then I know every year at the US Open you’ve got to enter Moscow and that’s always a case of: do I enter? Do I not enter? Where am I in the race? Do I need to play every week?
“So there’s always a lot of discussion around US Open time about where I have to go (for tournaments in the fall season) to make a push.”
The US Open begins Monday 29 August at Flushing Meadows in New York; Stosur is seeded 16th.