World no.1 Ashleigh Barty ended 2019 in style by beating Elina Svitolina to win the WTA Finals in Shenzhen and the record-breaking purse.
The 23-year-old had lost all five previous meetings with Svitolina, the reigning champion, but won 6-4 6-3 in Shenzhen to claim the $4.42m (£3.4m) prize money - the biggest in tennis history.
The total prize fund for the event was £14m (£10.83m), twice the figure up for grabs in 2018.
The WTA Finals is a women-only event for the top-eight ranked players in the world: Ashleigh Barty, Karolina Pliskova, Naomi Osaka, Bianca Andreescu, Simona Halep, Petra Kvitova, Belinda Bencic and Elina Svitolina. Kiki Bertens and Sofia Kenin were alternatives.
Two groups of four, facing each other in a round-robin, lead to two semi-finals and then final. Svitolina won all three of her group matches, meaning her prize for winning the tournament would have been $4.73 (£3.65m). Barty won two group matches.
The reigning French Open champion ended Svitolina's 10-match winning run at the WTA Finals and stopped the 25-year-old becoming the first player to successfully defend the title since Serena Williams, who won three in a row between 2012 and 2014.
Barty, who only broke into the top 10 in April, told wtatennis.com: "It feels like it's been a year that just hasn't stopped. It's been a year of incredible ups and downs - I think more ups than downs. To cap it off with a very, very special night tonight in Shenzhen is really cool."
On the prize money, Barty said: "I think that's the biggest thing, it's been a growth of women's sport. For me individually, and I think for all of us players individually, it's not something we think about. It's more of kind of a general progression of putting our sport more on the map.
"I think we have the most beautiful sport, it's a global sport. Now we're getting more attention. I feel like we've earned that.
"As Micky [Lawler, WTA President] has said a million times: We've come from nothing and now we're in this position where we're breaking records. It's very special for our game, the WTA, all of the people behind the scenes that do so much hard work to try to put our sport on the map, try to create more of an interest globally."
Additional reporting by Press Association.
