- Ask Steven
World Tour winners
Steven LynchOctober 24, 2014
Some of the players in the WTA Tour finals have not yet won a Grand Slam singles title. How often has this - or the men's equivalent - been won by a non-major champion? asked Keith Jackson
Four of the eight players currently doing battle in Singapore - Eugenie Bouchard, Simona Halep, Agnieszka Radwanska and Caroline Wozniacki - have not yet won a grand slam singles title, although all of them have reached at least one final.
The year-end tournament started in 1972, and has seen several sponsors and formats since then, including a long period (1984-98) when the final was played as the best of five sets.
In that time the only woman who lifted the title despite never winning a grand slam singles was the German left-hander Sylvia Hanika, who beat the eight-times champion Martina Navratilova at Madison Square Garden in 1982.
The equivalent men's event, which started in 1970 and is now known as the ATP World Tour Finals - the 2014 tournament starts in London's O2 Arena on November 9 - has been won on three occasions by someone who never managed to collect a grand slam singles crown: Alex Corretja (1998), David Nalbandian (2005) and Nikolay Davydenko (2009).
Ask Steven features a number of experts, headed by Steven Lynch, who answer your questions across a variety of sports