Rybakina, Sabalenka, Pegula, Gauff headline Wuhan field
The entire Top 10 of the PIF WTA Rankings will be in Wuhan next month for the WTA 1000 Wuhan Open.
US Open champion and new World No. 1 Elena Rybakina leads the field, and she'll be joined by Aryna Sabalenka, Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff, Mirra Andreeva, Linda Noskova, Elina Svitolina, Karolina Muchova, Iga Swiatek and Marta Kostyuk.
The rest of the Top 25 will be there as well, minus Victoria Mboko, who is still recovering from a left knee injury she suffered this summer.
The second of back-to-back 1000-level tournaments on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz calendar, the Wuhan Open features a 56-player singles draw. That includes 43 direct entrants, eight qualifiers, four wild cards and one special exemption.
The final four direct entrants are Daria Snigur, Yuliia Starodubtseva, Cristina Bucsa and Karolina Pliskova. The first four main-draw alternates are Lilli Tagger, Anhelina Kalinina, Mayar Sherif and Tamara Korpatsch.
Gauff is the defending champion in Wuhan after winning last year's edition without dropping a set. She defeated seventh-seeded Jasmine Paolini in the semifinals, then sixth-seeded Pegula in the championship match. The year prior she made it to the semifinals before losing to Sabalenka, and enters Wuhan with an 8-1 career record.
Sabalenka is a three-time champion in Wuhan. She won back-to-back titles in 2018 and 2019, and after the tournament took a four-year hiatus, she won it again in 2024, in its first year back on the WTA Tour schedule. The World No. 2 is 20-1 all-time at the tournament, her lone loss coming to Pegula in the semifinals last year.
The Wuhan champion will get 1,000 rankings points, as per all WTA 1000s, and will take home $665,000.
First-round action will begin on Monday, Oct. 12, and the tournament will run through Sunday, Oct. 18. The draw will be revealed on Saturday, Oct. 10.
