Serena Williams voted 2014 WTA Player of the Year
No. 1 Serena Williams has been voted the 2014 WTA Player of the Year for the sixth time in her career and third year in a row. Williams capped off her up and down season by winning 26 of her last 29 matches. She won seven titles on the year, including her 18th Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open, which moved her into a three-way tie with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova for second on the Open Era list.
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She also won in Brisbane, Miami, Rome, Stanford, Cincinnati and at the WTA Finals in Singapore, and held the No. 1 ranking for every week of the year. On the whole she went 52-8 for the season and posted an impressive 12-1 record against top ten opposition.
Williams is only one of three players to ever win Player of the Year accolades more than twice. Steffi Graf won it eight times and Navratilova has won it seven times. Serena previously won the award in 2002, 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2013.
Williams won the media voting with 36 of 58 votes but came in second to No. 3 Simona Halep in the fan voting. Halep pulled in 48 percent of the vote with Williams coming in second at 21 percent.
Here's a summary of the rest of the WTA's season-ending awards:
- Newcomer of the Year: Belinda Bencic
- Most Improved Player of the Year: Eugenie Bouchard
- Comeback Player of the Year: Mirjana Lucic-Baroni
- Doubles Team of the Year: Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci
