The fall swing is already underway on the Hologic WTA Tour in San Diego and Osaka, Japan as the tour makes its final push to the tour's post-season events at the WTA Elite Trophy and WTA Finals Cancun.
With the Hologic WTA Tour's return to China, the stakes are high over the next eight weeks. The fall calendar is as dense and point-laden, as it has been since pre-Covid times, with 13 regular-season tournaments (compared to 10 last fall) as well as the WTA Elite Trophy and WTA Finals.
In the most notable change from last year, there will be two WTA 1000 tournaments to close the season, in Guadalajara and Beijing.
Here's the tournament schedule for the remaining eight weeks of the season:
September 11
WTA 500: Cymbiotika San Diego Open (San Diego, USA)
WTA 250: Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships (Osaka, Japan)
September 17
WTA 1000: Guadalajara Open AKRON (Guadalajara, Mexico)
WTA 250: Galaxy Holding Group Guangzhou Open (Guangzhou, China)
September 25
WTA 500: Toray Pan Pacific Open (Tokyo, Japan)
WTA 250: Ningbo Open (Ningbo, China)
September 30
WTA 1000: China Open (Beijing, China)
October 9
WTA 500: Zhengzhou Open (Zhengzhou, China)
WTA 250: Hana Bank Korea Open (Seoul, Korea)
WTA 250: Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open (Hong Kong)
October 16
WTA 250: Jasmin Open Monastir (Monastir, Tunisia)
WTA 250: Jiangxi Open (Jiangxi, China)
WTA 250: Transylvania Open (Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
October 24
Post-season: WTA Elite Trophy (Zhuhai, China)
The WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai returns to the calendar for the first time since 2019. The 12 players ranked from No.9 through No.20 at the end of the regular season will qualify for the round-robin event, which has crowned Venus Williams (2015), Petra Kvitova (2016), Julia Goerges (2017), Ashleigh Barty (2018) and Aryna Sabalenka (2019) as champions.
October 29
Post-season: WTA Finals Cancun (Cancun, Mexico)
Mexico will once again host the WTA Finals, this time in Cancun. The top eight singles players and doubles teams on the Race to the WTA Finals Leaderboard at the end of the regular season will qualify for the event.
Rankings Watch: Sabalenka, Gauff-Pegula duo headline historic shakeup
Key Storylines:
Race enters the final lap
The Race to the WTA Finals tabulates the points earned during the 2023 season. The top eight singles and doubles players at the end of the season will qualify for the WTA Finals, and the players finishing from No.9 to No.20 will qualify for the WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai.
Here are the Race to the WTA Finals standings heading into the fall swing:
Singles
1. Aryna Sablaenka: 8,210
2. Iga Swiatek: 6,905
3. Coco Gauff: 5,620
4. Elena Rybakina: 5,476
5. Jessica Pegula: 4,405
6. Marketa Vondrousova: 3,661
7. Karolina Muchova: 3,650
8. Ons Jabeur: 3,211: 2,737
10. Petra Kvitova: 2,590
11. Belinda Bencic: 2,671
12. Jelena Ostpaenko: 2,405
13. Daria Kasatkina: 2,240
14. Beatriz Haddad Maia: 2,111
15. Maria Sakkari: 2,041
Doubles:
1. Gauff/Pegula: 5,565
2. Hunter/Mertens: 4,230
3. Schuurs/Krawczyk: 3,570
4. Aoyama/Shibahara: 3,405
5. Krejickova/Siniakova: 3,305
6. Melichar-Martinez/Perez: 3,175
7. Townsend/Fernandez: 3,120
8. Hsieh/Wang: 2,945
9. Zvonareva/Siegemund: 2,632
10. Dabrowski/Routliffe: 2,320
Battle for the Year-end No.1 Ranking
For the first time in 75 weeks, Iga Swiatek started a week outside the No.1 position. On Monday, Aryna Sabalenka overtook Swiatek, but even Sabalenka acknowledges there is work to do. The goal is to finish as the year-end No.1, which means holding off Swiatek and the chasing peloton.
Coco Gauff looking unstoppable
The last handful of first-time major winners have quietly put the idea of a guaranteed post-Slam slump to rest. Last season, Elena Rybakina parlayed her Wimbledon run into another major final in Australia and two WTA 1000 titles. This year, Sabalenka used her Australian Open title to propel her to the No.1 ranking, while Marketa Vondrousova more than backed up her Wimbledon win with a run to the US Open quarterfinals.
Now it's Gauff's turn. The newly minted US Open champion and new World No.3 has won 18 of her past 19 matches, and she is scheduled to take that momentum into Asia.
First time for Swiatek
Swiatek and Gauff are both set to make their tournament debuts in Asia. With their surges coming over the past four years, neither player has played a Hologic WTA Tour event in China. Both are entered in Beijing, with Swiatek also entered in Tokyo.
