Lucie Safarova became the eighth and final player to qualify for the WTA Finals when Carla Suarez Navarro was knocked out of the Kremlin Cup on Thursday.
Safarova faced an anxious wait to discover if she would feature in the season-ending tournament in Singapore after losing in the first round to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in Moscow on Wednesday.
Suarez Navarro knew she would play in the Far East at the expense of Safarova if she reached the final in Russia, but an emphatic 6-1 6-2 defeat to qualifier Daria Kasatkina in the quarter-finals ended the fifth-seeded Spaniard’s quest to prolong her season.
Safarova has lost both her matches since recovering from a bacterial infection that had kept her out since the US Open and will need to get back to something like her best if she is to make an impact in the WTA Finals.
Simona Halep, Maria Sharapova, Garbine Muguruza, Petra Kvitova, Agnieszka Radwanska, Angelique Kerber and Flavia Pennetta are the other seven players in action at Singapore, with the singles starting on Sunday.
