It is confirmed that BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open will not count towards the Road to Singapore standings once again. The tournament, which runs simultaneously as the Kremlin Cup in Moscow with a Saturday final, has a Sunday final which means the points earned from it cannot be counted towards the WTA Finals, which start on the Sunday that the Luxembourg final is set to play.
Some Hard Luck For This Year’s Competitors
This year, Timea Bacsinszky went to Luxembourg with hopes of using the tournament to help her qualify for the WTA Finals in Singapore. What she was unaware of was that the points she earned would only count towards her ranking points but not to her Singapore points because of the Sunday final.
With early losses from Carla Suarez Navarro, Flavia Pennetta, and Lucie Safarova, there was a realistic shot for the Swiss to qualify if she won the Luxembourg Open. However, players like Pennetta took their early loss, second round walkover, because they indeed knew that Luxembourg was not counting towards the Road to Singapore points. She did qualify for the other year-end event, the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai as the top seed, but chose not to participate due to injury.
Misaki Doi Lifts The Title
With top seeds faltering early and often, this was a chance for some of the lower-ranked players to make their mark up the rankings. Only two of the eight seeds who were projected to make the quarterfinals actually made it there, and all four of the semifinalists were not seeded with one of them being a wildcard. Alison Van Uytvanck retired in the semifinal against Misaki Doi while Mona Barthel downed Stefanie Vögele in three to set up the final showdown, Doi outlasted Barthel in three sets as she took advantage of the fatigued German who used up most of her energy in winning the second set tiebreak.