“A beautiful finish,” the veteran coach Wim Fissette said. “And I think every player on the W.T.A. side will be very happy to see Flavia out there on the court in Singapore. She’s a very popular lady on tour, always smiling, always in a good mood and always friendly to everybody, whatever the ranking.”

Manners matter to Pennetta. She admits to being troubled by what she sees as the new wave’s sense of entitlement.

“My way is always to be the same, doesn’t matter if now I’m a champion or before I was No. 20,” she said. “I still am Flavia, the same one. And always I say hello to everyone, buon giorno, and I try also to teach the young ones how is life because the young ones, sometimes they do not have so much respect. I remember myself when I get in the tour for the first time and I see Monica Seles or Jennifer Capriati, I was like shaking and my heart was going really fast. I remember really well that time, and now it looks like it’s not the same for them.”

“They also don’t have a lot of respect for the team,” she added. “It looks like they think everything is there for them and that is normal. But it is not normal. You have to deserve these things. You have to be nice with the people because the same people you meet when you go up are the same people you meet when you go do down.”

Pennetta has passed plenty of people in both directions through the seasons. In 2002, she started the year ranked 289th and promised herself she would quit if she did not make the top 100. She finished at 95.

She broke into the top 10 in 2009, then fell out of the top 40 in 2012 when a wrist injury threatened her career.

Long a great doubles player, she pushed on and was rewarded in singles, too. She won her first Premier Mandatory singles title at Indian Wells in 2014 and then won the United States Open several weeks after she had already decided to make this season her last.