Jasmine Paolini will not begin her North American hard-court swing as planned, the two-time Grand Slam finalist confirming her withdrawal from the next two tournaments on her schedule. The Italian announced on Monday that she will skip both the Mubadala Citi DC Open in Washington and the National Bank Open in Toronto.

She cited the foot injury that has followed her for much of a difficult 2026, choosing to protect the joint rather than rush back onto a hard court. “I’m sorry not to be there, and I wish all the participants two fantastic tournaments,” Paolini said in a message to her social media followers.

The withdrawal strips two significant events of one of the sport’s biggest draws. The Washington tournament, the only combined ATP and WTA 500 on the calendar, begins on 27 July. The Canadian Open, a WTA 1000 held this year in Toronto, starts on 2 August. Paolini had been projected as the No. 14 seed for the Toronto draw before she made her decision.

The problem is not new. Paolini first showed signs of trouble at the Italian Open in Rome in May, where strapping around her lower left leg was visible and she pulled out of the doubles draw alongside partner Sara Errani. The issue lingered through the clay season and into the grass, forcing her out of the doubles at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, as well as her scheduled appearance at the WTA 500 in Berlin.

Through all of it, she kept playing singles. That produced the brightest moment of her year at Wimbledon, where she reached the quarterfinals before losing to Marta Kostyuk. It was a rare high point in a campaign that has otherwise frustrated her. Paolini has not won a title in 2026 and has reached just one final, in doubles with Errani at the Miami Open. She slipped out of the top 10 at the end of May and now sits at No. 15 in the world.

It is a steep contrast with 2024, the season that made her a household name, when Paolini reached the finals at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon and won Olympic doubles gold in Paris with Errani. The past 18 months have been a harder road, and the foot has become the defining obstacle of it.

The timing matters because of what comes next. The North American swing is the final stretch of preparation before the US Open, which begins on 31 August. By skipping Washington and Toronto, Paolini leaves herself with a compressed run-in and almost no competitive tennis on the surface before the year’s last Grand Slam.

Her comeback is expected to come at the Cincinnati Open, where she enjoyed one of the best weeks of her career last season by reaching the final. That result also leaves her with a large block of ranking points to defend in Ohio. Protecting them, and arriving at Flushing Meadows with her foot sound, appears to be the priority behind the current pause.

There is at least some comfort in the ranking maths. Paolini did not play Washington last year and lost in the second round in Toronto, so the points she forfeits by sitting out are modest. Barring dramatic results elsewhere, she should hold her place inside the top 20.

Paolini is not the only leading name missing from the North American hard-court events. The women’s draws in particular have been hit hard. Defending Toronto champion Victoria Mboko is out as she recovers from an ankle injury. Karolina Muchova, a Wimbledon finalist this year, faces a short spell on the sidelines after a minor procedure. Emma Raducanu and Hailey Baptiste have also withdrawn from the Canadian Open, while the men’s field is without Carlos Alcaraz, who has not competed since injuring his wrist in April.

For Paolini, the wider picture is about managing a body that has not cooperated all year rather than any single tournament. A foot injury is unforgiving, and repeated attempts to play through it have already cost her doubles titles she was defending. The clear signal from her camp is that she would rather lose two events now than risk the one that matters most.

Whether the extra rest delivers a healthier player in New York is the question that will shape the rest of her season. For now, the North American swing goes on without one of its most popular competitors.

The Women’s Tennis Association is set to introduce mandatory genetic sex testing for every player wishing to compete on its Tour, in the most significant overhaul of the body’s eligibility rules in a generation.

Under the updated women’s eligibility policy, which comes into effect on Tuesday, players will be required to undergo a one-time test for the presence of the SRY gene — a section of DNA that forms part of the Y chromosome and is associated with the development of male sex characteristics. The screening can be carried out via a cheek swab, blood sample or saliva sample.

Players who return a negative result — indicating the gene is not present — will be immediately eligible to compete. A positive result will trigger further medical assessment before a player can be cleared. The WTA has said the screening is intended to be a once-in-a-lifetime requirement, on the basis that a person’s genetic make-up does not change, unless there is reason to believe a result was recorded in error. Players are also understood to be required to sign documentation acknowledging that a refusal to be tested could result in disciplinary action.

The move replaces the WTA’s previous framework, under which transgender women were permitted to compete if they declared their gender as female and maintained a lowered testosterone level for a defined period before entering events. Reuters has reported that there are no known transgender women currently active at any level of professional tennis.

Why the WTA has acted

In a statement, the WTA framed the change as an attempt to set a clear, consistent standard. “The WTA’s women’s eligibility policy aims to promote equal athletic opportunities in women’s professional tennis and ensure fair competition for all players in WTA tournaments,” the body said, adding that its board approved the updated policy “based on biological sex” following a review that involved consultation with members and reflected “changing standards in women’s sport.”

The WTA also acknowledged the sensitivity of the decision. “The WTA understands that this is a sensitive and complex matter,” it said. “We are committed to treating all players with dignity while implementing the policy in a respectful and thoughtful manner.”

The eligibility policy was first introduced in 1975 and has been reviewed periodically since. Tennis has its own history on the issue: transgender player Renée Richards competed on the women’s professional tour between 1977 and 1981 before going on to coach 18-time Grand Slam singles champion Martina Navratilova.

A wider shift across sport

The WTA becomes the latest governing body to adopt SRY-gene screening. World Athletics introduced mandatory one-time gene testing for competitors in the female category at world-ranking events in September 2025, while World Boxing approved compulsory SRY testing for female-category boxers in May 2025. The International Olympic Committee has also signalled it intends to use sex testing at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

Navratilova, a long-standing critic of transgender inclusion in women’s events, welcomed the WTA’s move as “a step in the right direction,” while stressing she had played no part in drafting the policy. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka said last year that she believed it would be unfair for women to face transgender opponents.

The case against

The decision is likely to reignite a fierce and long-running debate. Human-rights organisations and a number of medical and scientific bodies have argued that systemic sex testing — a practice largely abandoned in athletics in the 1990s before its recent revival — is discriminatory and can cause lasting harm to the athletes it affects, particularly women with differences of sex development (DSD) who may have no knowledge of their genetic make-up.

Critics also contend that a single genetic marker cannot capture the full biological complexity of sex, and that such policies risk conflating DSD athletes with transgender women despite the two groups being distinct. In March 2026, more than 80 human-rights and sport advocacy groups urged the IOC to drop its reported plans for universal genetic testing of female athletes.

With the policy taking effect on Tuesday, attention will now turn to how the WTA handles confidentiality, the practicalities of screening its playing body, and how the sport’s leading figures respond.

Barbora Krejcikova ended more than two years without a trophy on Sunday, defeating home favourite Maria Sakkari 7-6(5), 6-3 to win the inaugural Athens Open and spoil what the Greek capital had hoped would be a storybook coronation.

For Krejcikova, the win is the ninth WTA singles title of her career and her first since she lifted the Wimbledon trophy in 2024. The two seasons in between were shaped by injury and interrupted form, and the two-time Grand Slam champion arrived in Athens ranked outside the world’s top 30. A clean week on the hard courts of the Olympic Tennis Centre has now steered her back towards it.

The final followed the pattern of the Czech’s entire tournament: a slow start, then relentless recovery. Sakkari, roared on by a partisan crowd, broke early in both sets and led 4-1 in the first. Each time, Krejcikova reeled her back in. She forced a tie-break and edged it 7-5, then answered an early second-set break immediately before taking six of the closing eight games to seal the title in one hour and 43 minutes. She converted all three break points she created.

Krejcikova had good reason to believe in the comeback. Her route to the final included a first career win over Zheng Qinwen in the quarter-finals — avenging losses in the 2023 Zhengzhou final and at the 2024 WTA Finals — and a semi-final victory over top seed Clara Tauson, the only player to take a set off her all week. The win over Sakkari makes it 4-0 in their head-to-head.

If the result read as a triumph of experience, the occasion belonged as much to the woman who lost. The Athens Open marks the WTA Tour’s return to the Greek capital for the first time since 1990, and Sakkari had turned it into a personal homecoming. She reached the final 40 years after her mother, Angeliki Kanellopoulou, contested the final of the inaugural Athens Trophy in 1986 — mother and daughter, the same city, a generation apart.

Sakkari had not dropped a set all week, beating teenager Alina Korneeva 6-1, 7-5 in the semi-finals to reach her first final since Indian Wells in 2024. It was the 11th final of a career that peaked at world No. 3, and she was chasing a third tour-level title. The support was deafening; the finish, agonising. Twice in front, twice pegged back, the Greek No. 1 could not hold either advantage.

The near-miss did not dampen a landmark weekend for Greek tennis. A day earlier, Stefanos Tsitsipas had reached the Gstaad final, meaning both of the country’s leading players were in title matches on the same afternoon. Tsitsipas, who went on to win his own trophy, called it “a special moment for Greek tennis” — the kind of double that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, and exactly the momentum the new Athens event was created to harness.

For Krejcikova, the significance runs deeper than a 250-level title. After a stretch in which fitness questions had begun to shadow one of the most gifted all-court players on the tour, Athens is evidence that, healthy and settled, she remains a threat to anyone. The timing matters too, with the North American hard-court swing and the US Open now on the horizon. Ranking points banked here ease her path back towards seeding contention at the majors.

The result also reframes the closing image of a quietly compelling week. The inaugural Athens Open was sold as a celebration of tennis returning to a historic market, and it delivered the drama it needed — even if the script did not end the way the home crowd had written it. Sakkari leaves with the affection of a city and the sense that the final chapter of her career may yet include the home title that slipped away here.

Krejcikova leaves with the trophy, the ranking lift, and something less tangible but more valuable: proof that the comeback is real.

The 2026 Canadian Open keeps shedding star power. Karolina Muchova, the Wimbledon runner-up and world No. 6, confirmed on Saturday that she will miss next month’s WTA 1000 event in Toronto after undergoing a minor operation. Her exit is the latest in a run of high-profile absences that has already stripped the tournament of its defending women’s champion and the biggest name on the men’s entry list.

Muchova shared the news in a brief post on social media. The Czech said the surgery had been a success and that she had begun her recovery, but that it would keep her off court for several weeks. She did not name the injury or offer a timeline for her return. Muchova had been due to appear in Toronto for the first time, a debut she said she had been looking forward to. “Recovery comes first,” she wrote.

The 29-year-old has spent much of her career fighting her own body. She reached the Wimbledon final this month, losing to compatriot Linda Nosková, and was runner-up at the 2023 French Open, but repeated wrist problems and other setbacks have interrupted almost every promising run. Her best week at this tournament came in Montreal in 2024, when she reached the fourth round. She is expected back in time for the US Open later in the summer, though she set no date herself.

Her withdrawal follows that of the defending champion. Victoria Mboko announced on 7 July that she would not play, having failed to recover from a knee injury sustained at Queen’s Club in June, when she slipped on the grass during a match against Karolina Plíšková. The Canadian tore the medial collateral ligament in her left knee, an injury that also ended her grass-court season and her planned doubles run alongside Serena Williams.

For Mboko the timing is cruel. The women’s event alternates between Montreal and Toronto each year, and in 2026 it is Toronto’s turn — the city the 19-year-old grew up beside. She won last year’s title in Montreal as an 18-year-old wildcard ranked outside the top 300, beating Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina and, in the final, Naomi Osaka to announce herself on the world stage. Now ranked No. 10, she stands to forfeit the 1,000 ranking points that came with that breakthrough and faces a slide down the standings.

The men’s field in Montreal has been hit too, though far less heavily. Carlos Alcaraz remains the only leading name to pull out, the Spaniard still working his way back from the right wrist injury that has kept him off court since the Barcelona Open in April. His absence means he will miss the first Masters 1000 event of the North American hard-court swing for a third straight year. On the women’s side, Emma Raducanu is also absent as she manages a stress fracture in her right leg.

In all, six players had come off the two main-draw entry lists as of Sunday, five of them from the women’s field in Toronto. Even with those gaps, the tournament retains real strength. Organisers have pointed to one of the deepest entry lists in the event’s history for the expanded 96-player format, with the vast majority of the men’s top order due in Montreal. But the thinning of the Toronto draw changes the shape of the women’s competition. With the champion gone and several seeds missing, the title looks unusually open, and the door widens for the next tier of contenders to make an early-summer statement.

The National Bank Open runs from 1 to 13 August, with the men in Montreal and the women in Toronto, before the tour moves on to Cincinnati and then the US Open. For a field that had hoped to showcase a Canadian defending her crown close to home and a Wimbledon finalist on debut, the build-up has instead become a story about who is missing.