Jelena Ostapenko produced arguably the most breathtaking performance of 2017 when she stormed back from a set and 3-0 down to stun Simona Halep and claim the French Open title. Garbine Muguruza played the best tennis of her career so far to win Wimbledon having lost only one set in the whole tournament. Karolina Pliskova made a superb start to the year by claiming a title in Brisbane in January and another in Qatar in February. Caroline Wozniacki reached a tour-high seven finals. And Halep has shown everyone the value of consistency by reaching World No.1 despite only winning one title (Madrid).

But as good as those performances are, the current frontrunner for the player of the year accolade is surely Elina Svitolina. The Ukrainian, 23, has won five titles (including three Premier events) and boasts a fantastic win-loss record of 51-12. She has also beaten Halep twice, Wozniacki twice, Muguruza once, Pliskova once and Venus Williams once, meaning the only players in the top eight Svitolina has not beaten in 2017 are Ostapenko and Caroline Garcia.

For Svitolina to cement her status as the favorite for the player of the year award, she will need to win the WTA Finals in Singapore next week. But winning the year-end title could be the most difficult task any of the eight women participating have faced in 2017, as you can make a strong case for any of them emerging victorious.

Wozniacki and Halep are the most experienced in WTA Finals having appeared four and three times respectively, Muguruza is arguably the best player in the world when in form, Pliskova has the best serve of the eight, Venus is a seven-time Grand Slam champion, Svitolina has probably the best all-around game and Ostapenko and Garcia are huge hitters capable of beating anyone on their day.

To complicate the task of predicting a winner even further, three of the eight competitors – Muguruza, Svitolina, and Wozniacki – pulled out of their most recent tournaments due to injury, so their fitness levels may be an unknown quantity. If all three are fit, they will all be very strong contenders for the title. But if any of them are still troubled by their injuries, they will probably struggle to make it through the round robin stage given the quality of their opposition.

When you consider all these factors, the most sensible choice as favorite is probably current World No.1 Halep, as she is injury-free, has been the most consistent WTA player this year and played some of her best tennis of 2017 during the recent China Open. She can also look to her performances in 2014 for inspiration, as that year she hammered Serena Williams, Agnieszka Radwanska and Eugenie Bouchard on her way to the final, where she lost her rematch with the American.

The result of the 2016 WTA Finals provides another way of predicting who will win this time around, as last year it all came down to form. Dominika Cibulkova sneaked into the top eight just before the tournament by reaching the final of the China Open and winning the title in Linz. She then emerged from the round robin, despite only winning one match out of three, fought her way past Svetlana Kuznetsova in the semi-final and then demolished Angelique Kerber in the final.

If the 2017 edition follows a similar pattern, the champion will be Caroline Garcia. Before the Wuhan Open began in September, the Frenchwoman had the slimmest of chances to make it to Singapore ahead of Johanna Konta. But the Brit lost early in Wuhan and Beijing and Garcia took full advantage by producing some truly magnificent tennis – undoubtedly the best of her career so far – to beat Halep, Svitolina, Kerber, Cibulkova, Ashleigh Bart and Petra Kvitova en route to winning two consecutive Premier titles.

These triumphs catapulted Garcia up to number eight in the Race to Singapore and, when Konta pulled out of Hong Kong due to a foot injury, the Frenchwoman’s place in the 2017 WTA Finals was sealed. Can she now do a Cibulkova and win the year-end tournament as well?

Halep and Garcia are not the only players in excellent form. Ostapenko won her second career title – the Korea Open – in September, and then reached the semi-finals in Wuhan and Beijing, so she will be feeling very confident about her game ahead of the WTA Finals. However, she may be let down by her very erratic serve when up against the best players in the world and needs to put in plenty of hard work to improve the shot during the off-season in December.

It is difficult to know what to expect from Pliskova in Singapore. At times in 2017, she has been brilliant, but most of the time she has simply been good, as her four semi-final and seven quarter-final losses suggest. Given this record, another semi-final showing seems likely. To achieve more than that, the Czech’s serve and groundstrokes will need to be at their very best, as her fellow competitors are some of the best in the world at exposing her relatively weak movement.

Venus is unlikely to win in Singapore but you can never rule her out. She has competed in two Grand Slam finals in 2017 and reached semi-finals at the Miami Open and the US Open. These performances show she can still compete with the very best even at the age of 37. However, despite reaching the latter stages of events, she has not won a title this year, and that will probably count against her at the WTA Finals because the rest of the top eight have all won matches when it matters most at some stage this season.