Saturday 21 October 2017 12:41, UK
An unpredictable women's season will culminate in fitting style at the WTA Finals, where seven out of eight players can win the trophy and also be crowned year-end world No 1.
The year has been like a rollercoaster, with four different major winners and not one player able to dominate in the absence of Serena Williams, who took a break to give birth to her first child.
Simona Halep, who became 2017's fifth No 1 earlier this month, leads a star-studded field in Singapore, where action gets underway at the Indoor Stadium on Sunday.
Garbine Muguruza, Karolina Pliskova, Elina Svitolina, Caroline Wozniacki and Jelena Ostapenko can all become world No 1 at the tournament which also throws up the beguiling possibility of Venus Williams, 37, returning to the top of the rankings for the first time since 2002.
Halep faces debutantes Svitolina and Caroline Garcia in the Red Group round robin, along with the Wozniacki, while Muguruza is in White Group with Williams, Pliskova and French Open champion Ostapenko.
"The dream came true. Is just the best feeling that I ever had in my tennis career so far," the 26-year-old Halep said.
"It's nice. I'm just enjoying the moment. I cannot describe in words what I feel, but it's a good feeling. I'm happy when I'm going to the courts now," added Halep, who has won 15 WTA tournaments since her breakthrough year in 2013.
Muguruza feels fit, fresh and keen to bank on her experience of previous visits to Singapore to emerge from a group containing the tour's hardest hitters in the round-robin phase.
"Honestly, I had no preference about who I played," the 24-year-old Spaniard said. "Lately I have been playing with the big hitters and I felt a little bit better than maybe in the past, because every aggressive player is complicated to face.
"But I have improved that side of my game, and, yeah, it's good that I'm going to play with them again."
Garcia, who becomes the first Frenchwoman to reach the Finals, may be the lowest-ranked player, but she is on an 11-match winning streak after her back-to-back victories in Wuhan and Beijing.
"I don't feel very different on court winning 11 matches straight than not. I mean, it feels good, for sure, to have so many wins like this behind me, but I know tennis can go very fast in one way or another," she said.
"So I'm just staying myself, staying humble at practice, keep improving, keep working out. I know all these matches were very hard. Some were very tight, and it could change from one way to another.
"So I just keep doing what I do the best and keep working out and stay focused."
The top two from each pool will advance to the semi-finals.
Sky Sports will have all the action from the Erste Bank Open and Swiss Indoors Basel before the Paris Masters.
The Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan and season-ending extravaganza World Tour Finals at London's O2 in November end another memorable year which will be covered via our website sky.mnosports.com/tennis with live blogs and updates as the season reaches its climax.
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