Another WTA Tour season has reached its conclusion, with many star names and rising challengers already looking ahead to 2025.
Coco Gauff has stepped up her preparations after winning the WTA Finals, although fellow top-10 player Jasmine Paolini has been enjoying her holidays after helping Italy win the Billie Jean King Cup.
Gauff and Paolini finished in the year-end top 10, with both players now keen to push on in the 2025 season.
Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek meanwhile played out a thrilling battle for the year-end number one spot, which was won by the former.
But they both emerged victorious in Grand Slams in 2024, with Sabalenka winning the Australian Open and US Open and Swiatek winning the French Open.
Laura Robson makes ‘superstar’ Qinwen Zheng claim
Barbora Krejcikova meanwhile won Wimbledon, but it was Qinwen Zheng who caught the attention of Laura Robson.
Speaking of the Chinese ace, Robson said on the Sky Sports Tennis podcast: “I mean the sponsors’ patches have grown by the second. She is a superstar already. You just had to look at the crowds for Wuhan and Beijing and how many people turned up at her practice sessions, let alone her first round match there, and then to see how many people turned up to her first round matches in Riyadh.
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“It’s mental almost, how many people flew over from China to watch her round robin matches and stayed until the end. She is almost going to transcend the sport in a way that we haven’t seen since Li Na. Bringing hundreds of millions to her matches.”
Laura Robson says what Qinwen Zheng does that is ‘out of this world’
Zheng currently occupies a career-high ranking of fifth place, helped by her 2024 win-loss record of 50-18.
She clinched a hugely impressive three titles in 2024, winning the Toray Pan Pacific Open Tennis after glory at the Paris Olympics and in Palermo.
And it all very nearly ended superbly for Zheng, who fell at the final hurdle to Coco Gauff at the WTA Finals.
Zheng is distant on tour, with Robson believing such an attitude has definitely worked in the former’s favour, saying: “She has improved so much this year. The movement is out of this world. The forehand, she is able to dominate with. The serve she has changed a bit more to make it a bit more fluid.
“And she wants it so badly, that’s what I really like listening to her, when she says that she doesn’t really want to make friends in the locker room because she has one job and one job only and that’s to win Slams and be world number one. I love it. She’s honest, she’s true to herself.”
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