Steve Simon was feeling optimistic.
Despite a 2023 season that ended with an avalanche of grumbling following the WTA Finals in Cancun, Mexico, which featured bad weather, a potentially dangerous center court and unrelenting complaints from the players, Simon, the chair and chief executive of the women’s tour, was doing everything he could to move forward into 2024.
"The WTA is very fine,” Simon said by video call in mid-December, just after it was announced that the WTA will soon separate the roles of chair and CEO, with Simon becoming executive chair. He no longer will be in charge of day-to-day operations and instead will be tasked with, as he said, "working on strategic geopolitical issues, which are now very prevalent and affecting our business in many different ways.”