Caroline Garcia (6th in the rankings) returned to the WTA Finals as if she had never left. Five years after her first appearance in the tournament that brings together the best tennis players of the season, the Frenchwoman celebrated in a big way with a victory over Coco Gauff (4th), which allowed her to enter the fight within the Tracy Austin Group. It was 6-4 and 6-3 in an hour and 18 minutes of play.
The Frenchwoman won three of her ten titles in 2022: Bad Homburg, Warsaw, and Cincinnati, after three years without celebrating on the circuit. She also made semifinals in Lyon, Lausanne, and the US Open - her best historical performance in Grand Slam tournaments, surpassing the quarterfinals of Roland Garros 2017. After five years, with a balance of 41 wins and 19 losses in the individual circuit during 2022, she returned to the WTA Finals in Texas.
In 2017, she made her debut in the competition and reached the semifinals with two wins in the group stage against Caroline Wozniacki and Elina Svitolina, but she fell in the penultimate stage to Venus Williams. In this edition, she will seek to equal or improve that performance, but she knows that in order to do so, she will have to face the opponent who has only defeated her on eight occasions this year: Iga Swiatek. The good news from the gala is that she is precisely one of those eight privileged players.
In the WTA 250 in Warsaw, against all odds, the former world No. 4 caused an upset against the local player and, to conclude an unforgettable week in which she achieved her first victory over the world's top-ranked player, she sealed the championship in the final.