The 2018 Taiwan Open is the third edition of the event, as the sport of tennis – on the heels of Li Na’s success earlier this decade – made a big bet and a lot of investments to bring more tournaments to Asia. The WTA, which just inked a 10-year deal to stage its year-end championship event, the WTA Finals, in Shenzhen, China, hopes that this tournament in Taiwan will continue to grow into a fixture which will boost fan interest and player development in this region of the world.
Although the event isn’t too far from where the players were playing this week – Down Under at the Australian Open – we’re not going to see a lot of stars. This is clearly going to be an event that highlights some of the best Asian players on the Tour. Not only are we on the heels of the first grand slam of the season, which means that some players may simply want a rest, there’s also another event happening simultaneously in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The competition in the 32-player main draw will begin on Monday, January 29.
Event Details
Event: Taiwan Open
Category: WTA International Level
Date: January 29 – February 4, 2018
Location: Taipei Arena – Taipei, Taiwan
With a prize money allotment of $226,750, this tournament won’t command quite the same as the St. Petersburg tour stop in Russia the same week. That’s a higher-status event. However, Taiwan is making an attempt to become more of a magnet for WTA tennis, and with the new location for this event – two years ago it was the nearby city Kaohsiung – it’s continuing to evolve as a tour stop after the Australian Open.
Points
Champion – 280
Runner-up – 180
Semifinal – 110
Quarterfinal – 60
Round-of-16 – 30 points
Previous Year’s Champions (two previous editions of the tournament)
2017 – Elina Svitolina def. Peng Shuai, 6-3, 6-2
2016 – Venus Williams def. Misaki Doi, 6-4, 6-2
Player Info:
Defending runner-up Peng Shuai is the top seed and a player the crowd in Taipei will likely get behind. A similar level of enthusiasm is likely to greet Zhang Shuai, the second seed. Peng has played in just one match this year and lost, but is coming off a strong campaign in 2017. She was 40-23 on the season, which is quite respectable. She collected 29 wins on the hard courts.
The third seed is Samantha Stosur, the Australian who always performs poorly at the Australian Open due to the pressure associated with that event for her. Getting out of Australia to another country could relax her and make her a force to be reckoned with at this event. She has had a rough go of things to start the year so far. She has dropped three of the four matches she’s played in.
The fourth seed is Timea Babos, who could be viewed in one of two ways at this tournament. On one hand, she could ride a wave of confidence and play well, due to the fact that she just won the Australian Open women’s doubles title with Kristina Mladenovic, defeating the powerful Russian doubles team of Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova. She might fly through the week. On the other hand, she could be dead tired from all her doubles play and might bomb out in round one. She is an intriguing player in this field.
Eugenie Bouchard got a wild card into this event… and she is a wild card in this bracket. No one knows what to expect from her in a tournament such as this one. She might be able to stand up to a field without a single top-25 player, but her game is not consistent by any measurement.
Taipei Arena
The Taiwan Open’s first year of existence brought the event to Kaohsiung and the Yang-Ming Tennis Centre, which had a 5,000-seat center court, a 650-seat additional stadium, and 10 added courts. Now, though, the Taipei Arena moves into its second year as the host venue for the event in the city of Taipei. The main stadium court has a capacity of 10,000 seats, double what Kaohsiung offered.
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