The Asian swing has once again been shaped by a wave of withdrawals, and this year is proving no different. The Singapore Open has already lost Jessica Pegula and Amanda Anisimova, while the China Open has also been hit hard.

Emma Raducanu, Alex Eala, Madison Keys and Hailey Baptiste have all pulled out of the Beijing event, taking the total number of withdrawals there to nine. Attention is now turning to the Wuhan Open, which runs from 12 to 18 October and has already been weakened by the absence of two star names.

Victoria Mboko has confirmed she will not play the final Masters tournament on the WTA Tour. The Canadian suffered a serious knee injury at Queen’s during the grass court swing, and that has kept her out of the entire WTA Tour. Mboko is very unlikely to return before the 2027 season, when she will hope to feature at the Australian Open.

Madison Keys is the other notable withdrawal from Wuhan, having also pulled out of the China Open. With little chance of qualifying for the WTA Finals at the end of the year, which will be held at Indian Wells, the decision may be a sign that the American is ending her season early.

Keys has not played since a difficult loss to Qinwen Zheng, a match in which she led 5-0 in the deciding set. After that defeat, she said: “I just feel like I’ve kind of been struggling for a while now, and I feel like I was able to kind of play through it for a bit.

“I’m sure everyone could kind of see that I was struggling a little bit, but inside it felt probably even bigger than that. Yeah, some weeks are easier than others, and this week is obviously one of the harder ones just because you care somuch. Yeah, I’m going to have to make some sort of changes.”No, I think it’s been something that’s been building for a while. I just kind of keep pushing it off and pushing it off just because that’s how the tennis world works. It’s just to the point where I actually need to do something about it.”

With three weeks remaining before Wuhan begins, more withdrawals from the final Masters event of the WTA calendar would not be a surprise.

Elena Rybakina will lead the field at the China Open as the world No. 1 for the first time in her career, taking the top seed in Beijing after her rise in the WTA Rankings following her title run at the season-ending Grand Slam.

The WTA 1000 event at the National Tennis Centre runs from 30 September to 11 October and is the ninth, and penultimate, WTA 1000 tournament of the season. Only the Wuhan Open remains after Beijing.

Amanda Anisimova arrives as the defending champion, having beaten Linda Noskova 6-0, 2-6, 6-2 in the 2025 final to secure her second WTA 1000 crown.

The China Open will feature a 96-player singles main draw. The top 32 players on the entry list are seeded and all of them receive byes into the second round. Eight wildcards have been awarded, with former world No. 4 Zheng Qinwen the most prominent name among them. Two players have entered using protected rankings, while 12 more places will be filled through qualifying, with the remainder made up of direct entries through the WTA Rankings.

Rybakina heads the top half of the draw, while world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka anchors the bottom half. Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff, Mirra Andreeva, Linda Noskova, Elina Svitolina, Karolina Muchova, Iga Swiatek and Marta Kostyuk round out the top 10 seeds.

Three players who were due to be seeded have withdrawn: Victoria Mboko, Alex Eala and Madison Keys. That leaves Maria Sakkari, Nikola Bartunkova and Cristina Bucsa as the last players on the seeded list, with Peyton Stearns, Liudmila Samsonova and Donna Vekic next in line should further withdrawals occur.

The absentee list has already reached nine. Mboko, Eala and Keys are the most notable names out, while Emma Raducanu is also missing as she continues to recover from a stress fracture in her shin. Rybakina is also dealing with a leg injury and Anisimova has a wrist issue, so more changes could still follow before play begins.

The draw is scheduled for Sunday, 27 September, three days before the main draw starts in Beijing.

Alexander Zverev has closed 2026 with a record that places him above every other man in Grand Slam titles this year, following his emphatic US Open success. Even so, the conversation around his achievements has not moved on cleanly, with some still eager to argue that circumstances have done much of the work for him.

For years, Zverev occupied the uncomfortable space of being the player who nearly arrived, only to be denied when the biggest matches came around. First it was Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic who stood in the way. More recently, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have done the same.

That long wait finally ended when he won the French Open in June, and he followed it by lifting the US Open title earlier this month. Those victories confirmed his place among the elite, yet criticism quickly settled on the fact that he beat only one top-10 player across those two major runs, with No 9 seed Ben Shelton falling in the US Open final.

It is clear that injuries to Alcaraz and Sinner have shaped the landscape in 2026, but Boris Becker has firmly rejected the idea that this alone explains Zverev’s success. Speaking on his podcast with Andrea Petkovic, Becker said: “I thought it was a bit of a shame after that then again the critics came saying, ‘Yeah, he only won because Alcaraz and Sinner didn’t play, or Alcaraz did play and Sinner was injured.’

“Or ‘He had an easy draw.’ So first, point one: it’s not his fault if Sinner gets injured before. It’s not his fault if Alcaraz spent four months injured, and thankfully, is back again, and in the quarters against Shelton, loses.

“It’s not his fault if his seeds in that half all lose early. He can only beat the opponent he has to face on the court. I actually find that an absolute disgrace. Incredible disrespect toward his performance.

“If that were a one-off fluke, okay. He’s in the final for a third Grand Slam in a row. Actually, he should in Melbourne – where he served for the match against Alcaraz in the semi – also been in the final. This guy could have been in the final of all four Slams this year.

“He was in three, he is the current Roland Garros champion, Wimbledon finalist. Now people have to finally – in the Autumn of his career – pay him the respect he deserves.

“I’m not wearing a German cap here. I see it as an athlete, as a tennis player. You have to show players respect who simply deliver their performance, and so that is why I’m very happy that Sascha won.”

Zverev’s latest triumph has not silenced everyone. John McEnroe drew attention by calling for Alcaraz and Sinner to return immediately after the US Open final, while other voices questioned whether Zverev had been fortunate not to face either player. Social media reaction, and commentary from around the sport, has often followed the same line.

Zverev himself has acknowledged that Sinner remains the man to beat when fully fit. Yet the resistance to fully embracing his 2026 season says as much about his standing off court as it does about his results on it. The allegations he has previously denied also continue to be raised by detractors.

Whatever the reception, the new US Open champion has completed a season that delivered the major breakthrough he had spent years chasing.