game, set, match

US Open champ Iga Swiatek leads tennis superstars into North Texas for 2022 WTA Finals

Iga Swiatek is the No. 1 women's tennis player in the world.

Al Bello/Getty Images

UPDATE 10-29-22: The final eight singles players and doubles teams, and order of play, are now set. Find the match schedule and more at the WTA website.

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Iga Swiatek is the No. 1 women's tennis player in the world.Fresh off her US Open victory, the world's No. 1 female tennis player, Iga Swiatek, will lead the top eight singles players and doubles teams into Fort Worth next month for the 2022 Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Finals.

The competition will take place October 31-November 7 at Dickies Arena, and tickets are now on sale.

The prestigious year-end finale has been moved to Fort Worth from Shenzhen, China, for one year only, WTA officials say. It's the first time the contest has been staged in North Texas, and the first time it's in the United States in 17 years.

“The Dickies Arena and the city of Fort Worth has a proven track record of hosting world class sporting and entertainment events, and we are excited to bring the WTA’s showpiece tournament back to the United States for the first time since 2005,” says Steve Simon, WTA Chairman and CEO, in a release. “This location and venue for the 2022 WTA Finals will provide a fantastic experience for players and fans alike and offer a fitting finale as another exciting season on the Hologic WTA Tour comes to a close.”

While the race to the top eight is still on, with several tournaments still to be played in coming weeks, both Swiatek and No. 2-ranked Ons Jabeur officially have qualified for the finals.

"I’m really excited to qualify for the WTA Finals this year for the second time in my career and I’m really looking forward to playing in front of the fans in Fort Worth,” Swiatek says in the release.

The top-ranked doubles team of Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova also has qualified.

"We are really looking forward to playing in Fort Worth in Texas and hopefully defending our title," Krejcikova says.

Two American stars, Jessie Pegula and Coco Gauff, currently stand at No. 3 and 4 in singles, respectively. Together, they are the 4th-ranked doubles team in the world. If they maintain these standings or climb higher, North Texas fans will get to seem them play.

Coco Gauff is one of the top-ranked singles and doubles players. Julian Finney/Getty Images

As of press time, the top eight singles players are:

1. Iga Swiatek (Poland)

2. Ons Jabeur (Tunisia)

3. Jessie Pegula (USA)

4. Coco Gauff (USA)

5. Caroline Garcia (France)

6. Aryna Sabalenka*

7. Daria Kasatkina*

8. Simona Halep (Romania)

As of press time, the top eight doubles teams are:

1. Barbora Krejcikova (Cze) / Katerina Siniakova (Cze)

2. Gabriela Dabrowski (Can) / Giuliana Olmos (Mex)

3. Lyudmyla Kichenok (Ukr) / Jelena Ostapenko (Lat)

4. Jessie Pegula (USA) / Coco Gauff (USA)

5. Elise Mertens (Bel) / Veronika Kudermetova*

6. Yifan Xu (Chn) / Zhauxuan Yang (Chn)

7. Demi Schuurs (Ned) / Desirae Krawczyk (USA)

8. Nicole Melichar-Martinez (USA) / Ellen Perez (Aus)

(*Per WTA style, players native to Russia do not have their country listed.)

Click here to follow the latest standings on the Race to the WTA Finals and here for the most up-to-date 2022 WTA Tour calendar.

All Session Tickets for the WTA Finals went on sale at 10 am Thursday, September 22, via Ticketmaster.

Single Session Tickets will go on sale at 10 am Tuesday, September 27, via Ticketmaster. (Venue presale is Monday, September 26 from 10 am-10 pm, CODE: SINGLES)

The WTA was founded by groundbreaking tennis legend Billie Jean King in 1983 on the principle of equal opportunity and has remained a global leader in women’s professional sports.

"The WTA is one of the world’s most recognizable and high-profile sports organizations, consisting of more than 1,600 players representing approximately 87 nations, all competing to earn WTA rankings, points, and prestigious tournament titles," the organization says. "The Hologic WTA Tour is annually comprised of around 50 events and four Grand Slams, spanning six continents and nearly 30 countries and regions with a global audience of over 900 million."

Keep up with the WTA at wtatennis.com.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film