The 2017 edition of the China Open should be wide open and utterly unpredictable, as was the Wuhan Open the preceding week in China. It is a familiar story in tennis: The arrival of autumn provides tired legs and tired players who mentally push themselves through the U.S. Open but then downshift before the final segment of the year. This gives lots of other players on tour a chance to break through. This is how Ashleigh Barty and Caroline Garcia made their way into the last Premier 5 final of the year. Now the scene shifts to the last Premier Mandatory WTA event of the year. Let’s take a closer the event at the WTA China Open to see who is the best bet. The competition in the 64-player main draw begins on Saturday, September 30.
Event Details
Event: WTA China Open
Category: WTA Premier Mandatory
Date: September 30 – October 8, 2017
Location: National Tennis Center – Beijing, China
With a prize money allotment of just under 6.4 million dollars, the 1,000-point tournament is the last big tour-wide cash bonanza of the season. The term “tour-wide” is important, because for the top eight players on tour, they will get another lucrative event at the WTA Finals in Singapore. This, however, is the last really lucrative tournament for the full tour, with a 64-player field and a full set of qualifying rounds. It’s a big opportunity for a lot of players to create momentum heading into 2018.
Points
Champion – 1,000
Runner-up – 650
Semifinal – 390
Quarterfinal – 215
Round of 16 – 120
Round of 32 – 65
Former Champions and Results (5 Years)
Year Champion Runner-up Score
2016 – Agnieszka Radwanska def. Johanna Konta – 6-4, 6-2
2015 – Garbine Muguruza def. Timea Bacsinszky – 7-5, 6-4
2014 – Maria Sharapova def. Petra Kvitova – 6-4, 2-6, 6-3
2013 – Serena Williams def. Jelena Jankovic – 6-2, 6-2
2012 – Victoria Azarenka def. Maria Sharapova – 6-3, 6-1
Player Info:
Garbine Muguruza lost in the quarterfinals of the Wuhan Open to Jelena Ostapenko. That’s not a bad loss – both women won major championships this year, and Ostapenko has rebounded in the fall after a bad summer. Muguruza has been the best player on tour in the second half of the WTA season. She’ll be expected to make a deep run at this event.
Simona Halep lost early in Wuhan and can use a big run in Beijing to lead into the WTA Finals. A championship in one or both events will give her reason to think that in 2018, she can win her first Grand Slam title. Halep can use this time on tour to develop her serve, which has let her down in a number of the closer matches she has played against top players this season. If she can walk away with a few points of clarity in her game, it will be worth it… but that means she needs to play more matches this week in China.
Elina Svitolina was not a factor in the last Premier 5 event of the year – remember, she won three Premier 5s before slowing down in Cincinnati in August, and then in Wuhan. Her loss to Madison Keys at the U.S. Open was a tough one. She led 4-2 in the third set. Her loss to Simona Halep at the French Open was even tougher. She led by a set and 5-1 in the second. It is easy for her to get down on herself, but she needs to find a way to bounce back and shrug off those losses, which are surely weighing on her.
Karolina Pliskova lost early in the Wuhan Open. She simply hasn’t played her best tennis, even though she has fought very hard on the court all year. The pressure of having been World No. 1 is no longer there, but Pliskova is not playing as freely as she needs to. This end-of-season stretch can be a time in which she loosens up and goes for her shots.
National Tennis Center
The host facility for the 2008 Beijing Olympics has a 15,000-seat main stadium court, a 10,000-seat second show court, and a 4,000-seat third court. It is a sprawling complex which can attract roughly 32,000 spectators for tennis on its different courts at one time, including a handful of outer courts beyond the three top show courts.
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