Tennis at the 20th Asian Games starts in Nagoya on Sunday September 27 and runs to October 3rd. It matters more than a multi-sport event on the edge of the tour calendar usually does: the men’s and women’s singles champions take the first places decided anywhere for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic tennis event, and one of the region’s biggest names has given up a WTA 1000 to be there.
The venue. Matches are played at the Nagoya City Higashiyama Park Tennis Center. It opened in 1993 and was renovated for the Games, according to the organising committee, and it also stages the soft tennis and wheelchair tennis events. The Games as a whole run from 19 September to 4 October across Aichi Prefecture and Nagoya.
The events. Five titles are on offer: men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles.
What is at stake for LA 2028. The ITF sets aside six ITF Places in each of the men’s and women’s Olympic singles draws, and four of them go to regional champions. The Asian, Pan-American, African and, for the first time, Pacific Games singles winners qualify for Los Angeles as long as they are ranked inside the top 500 and their nation’s quota of four has not already been filled by direct acceptance. The top-500 threshold is new; at the last Olympics it was top 400.
Nagoya is where the first of those places are decided, with the other continental places settled in 2027. Direct acceptance itself is based on the ATP and WTA singles rankings of 12 June 2028. Our Olympic tennis explainer covers the rest of the qualification system, and our LA 2028 schedule piece covers the calendar.
The last champions. The 2023 singles titles in Hangzhou went to China’s Zheng Qinwen and Zhang Zhizhen, according to the ITF. Zheng went on to win Olympic gold in Paris a year later. The ITF notes that both would have qualified on ranking anyway; the route matters most to players who would not, and it points to Brazil’s Laura Pigossi, who reached Paris 2024 solely by winning the Pan-American Games singles title.
The Beijing clash. The tennis event overlaps the China Open, whose WTA 1000 main draw begins on 30 September. The China Open is a mandatory event for eligible players, and skipping a mandatory WTA 1000 without an exemption brings a ranking penalty and may bring fines, Reuters reported. The Philippine Tennis Association has formally requested an exemption from the WTA so that Alexandra Eala can represent the Philippines, Reuters reported on 16 September.
“We have formally requested an exemption and we respect the WTA’s process,” PHILTA secretary general John Rey Tiangco said. “At the same time, Alex has made her decision to represent the Philippines at the Asian Games, and we fully support her.” The WTA’s own China Open preview lists Eala among the players not competing in Beijing, citing a schedule change. How the zero-point rule works for mandatory events is set out in our WTA 1000 guide.
Alexandra Eala. Ranked 18th, Eala is the highest-ranked player in the Asian Games women’s singles draw, according to Reuters. She arrives after the best season of her career, including her first WTA title at the DC Open in August, and she won two bronze medals at the 2023 Games. The women’s singles is scheduled to open on the first day, with the first and second rounds and the first round of the mixed doubles on 27 September from 10:00 local time.
Entries and draws. The full entry lists and draws are published on the Games’ official results site, results.asiangames2026.org. This guide does not list seeds or entrants because we could not confirm them against an official source before publication.
How to watch. The host broadcaster is CMG-IMP, and national rights holders carry the Games in each territory. In the Philippines, coverage is on ONE Sports and Cignal TV. Local time in Nagoya is Japan Standard Time, GMT+9.
The same week on tour. While Nagoya plays, the ATP moves to Tokyo and Beijing and the WTA begins its two-week China Open. Our China Open guide and The Asian Swing Explained cover the tour side of the calendar.
