{"id":8976,"date":"2014-10-26T12:49:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-26T16:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/?p=8976"},"modified":"2015-09-20T01:46:41","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T05:46:41","slug":"serena-superb-in-singapore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/news\/wta-tennis\/serena-superb-in-singapore\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Superb in Singapore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-Singapore-Winner-Serena-II.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8973\" alt=\"2014 Singapore WTA Finals Winner \u2013 Serena Williams\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-Singapore-Winner-Serena-II.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"331\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-Singapore-Winner-Serena-II.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-Singapore-Winner-Serena-II-300x160.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-Singapore-Winner-Serena-II-150x80.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-Singapore-Winner-Serena-II-500x266.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The WTA Finals, as it&#8217;s termed now, featured world No. 1 Serena Williams against the top Romanian, No. 4 seed Simona Halep.\u00a0 This was the first time Simona Halep made the trip to the year-end championship, whereas Serena was looking for her third WTA Finals title in a row.<\/p>\n<p>Williams needed just 1 hour and 9 minutes to defeat Halep with a score of 6-3, 6-0.\u00a0 The match was close early in the first set but at 3-3 Serena took the next nine games to close it in a hurry.<\/p>\n<p>The inaugural event in Singapore, where the year-end championship dubbed WTA Finals was held this year and shall be for next four years, was more than just the competition between the top eight ladies in tennis; this was a spectacle of show, passion, mishaps, missed opportunities, triumph, and of course defeat.\u00a0 It was obvious from the beginning this will be a championship like none before since it all started at a packed 21st Century resort&#8217;s shopping center.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the regular competition, this year the WTA added mini-events titled &#8220;Rising Stars&#8221; and &#8220;Future Stars&#8221;, as well as legends matches, stretching the show to 10 days.<\/p>\n<p>Round Robin competition brought many surprises.\u00a0 Both top seeds suffered losses and only one made the semifinals.\u00a0 At the end, No. 4 seed, Simona Halep, and No. 8 seed, Caroline Wozniacki, led their respective groups.<\/p>\n<p>Although routed in straight sets by Simona Halep in the Round Robin stage in one of the worst defeats of her career, Serena Williams returned the favor by only allowing three games in the final match, and none in the second set.<\/p>\n<p>Williams will retain her No. 1 ranking for the remainder of the year and beyond.\u00a0 Halep improved to No. 3.<\/p>\n<p>[divider]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/forum\/showthread.php?tid=3143\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Click here to discuss the Serena Williams\/Simona Halep final in the discussion forum.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>[divider]<\/p>\n<p>Cover Photo (Creative Commons License): VOXSPORTSdotNET<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The WTA Finals, as it&#8217;s termed now, featured world No. 1 Serena Williams against the top Romanian, No. 4 seed Simona Halep.\u00a0 This was the first time Simona Halep made the trip to the year-end championship, whereas Serena was looking for her third WTA Finals title in a row. Williams needed just 1 hour and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":8973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[652,125,137,651,113,653],"class_list":["post-8976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wta-tennis","tag-bnp-paribas-wta-finals","tag-serena-williams","tag-simona-halep","tag-singapore","tag-wta","tag-wta-finals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisfrontier.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}