Surprising rise of Kerber and Cibulkova in 2016 suggests an unpredictable post-Williams world

With the 2016 WTA season now resigned to history, Ahmed Rizvi looks at what this year represents in terms of the future of women's tennis.

Angelique Kerber, left, started 2016 ranked world No 10, while Dominika Cibulkova began the season ranked No 66. Clive Brunskill / Getty Images

If you have spent the last few years wondering what the world of women’s tennis will look like once Serena Williams calls time on her peerless career, then 2016 must have answered most of your questions.

The year, or rather the changing of the guard, started with a doughty Angelique Kerber stunning Williams in the final of the Australian Open in January. And now, the season comes to a close with an equally gritty Dominika Cibulkova outgunning Kerber, now the world No 1, to win the season-ending WTA Finals in Singapore.

In January, who would have thought these two would be contesting the final in Singapore? Williams was expected to lord it again at the big tournaments. There was Maria Sharapova in case she slipped and Victoria Azarenka as well.

Azarenka, a former world No 1, had looked the most legitimate contender to replace Williams at the top following her “Sunshine Double” in Indians Wells and Miami, but she has put her career on hold to have a baby while Sharapova is serving a doping ban.

Kerber was not even in the reckoning back then. She had started the year ranked No 10, 6,355 points behind Williams. Even after her Australian Open triumph and her climb to No 2, the German was still 3,545 points behind.

At world No 66, Cibulkova was even farther back in the rankings posted just after the Australian Open on February 1, with a mere 881 points to her credit. And now, she is world No 5, with 4,875 points. The Slovak, runner-up to Li Na at the 2014 Australian Open, has never been ranked higher and she has never won more titles in a calendar year than 2016. In fact, she has doubled her tally of career singles titles with four triumphs this season.

Cibulkova’s other three titles this year came at the Katowice Open, the Eastbourne International and the Linz Open, and now, with her win in Singapore, she sits at the top of the WTA Tour’s list of most titles in 2016.

Kerber will finish her remarkable season with three titles, two of which came at grand slams. The German also reached the final at Wimbledon.

Overall, Kerber appeared in a tour-high eight finals in 2016, including the Rio Olympics, and has played 81 matches, winning, again a tour-high, 63 of them. She also leads the WTA’s prize-money list for 2016 with more than US$8.66 million (Dh32.5m) in earnings.

Incredibly, Kerber has managed all this without featuring in the top 10 of the Tour’s statistics leaders for aces (topped by Karolina Pliskova), or service points won. She was not in the top five of the return points won and return games won list either.

Cibulkova, who had surgery on her left Achilles’ tendon last year, does not feature in any of those lists as well, and yet she has managed to climb a staggering 61 spots in the rankings in eight months. It is her energy and courage that sets her apart, and her aggressive counter-punching, traits she certainly shares with Kerber.

So what does their emergence, and indeed Williams’s long walk into the sunset, mean for women’s tennis? It probably means the end of feudalism on the WTA Tour. There have been enough indications in 2016, a year which saw only three singles players defend their title – Kerber (Stuttgart), Williams (Wimbledon) and Svetlana Kuznetsova (Moscow).

Now, Cibulkova’s win over the world No 1 in Singapore, and indeed Monica Puig’s triumph in the Olympic final, have only confirmed the notion. In the coming years, then, expect the WTA Tour to be a lot more open, a lot more egalitarian.

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