Nikola Bartunkova was 5-0 up on Karolina Muchova before the seventh seed had a game on the board, and when Muchova finally clawed three back, the 20-year-old Czech simply started again. Bartunkova won 6-3, 6-0 on Thursday to reach her first WTA 1000 semifinal at the China Open, taking the last seven games and closing it when Muchova sent a ball long.
The opening burst took 19 minutes, and the second set followed the same script: another five-game lead, no way back for Muchova, who had needed nine match points to get past Naomi Osaka two days earlier. “Honestly I don’t know. It was (an) unbelievable match,” Bartunkova said on court. “She’s a great player and also a great human being.” She called the win a dream come true.
The run. It is the third win over a Top 10 player of Bartunkova’s career, and all three have come this year: No. 10 Belinda Bencic at the Australian Open, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 6-3 in the third round here and now Muchova. On the way she also beat Magdalena Frech 6-2, 6-2 and Sinja Kraus 6-0, 4-6, 6-3. This is only her fourth WTA 1000 main draw.
Her previous best at the level was the fourth round in Rome in May, as a lucky loser. She began 2026 in qualifying at the Australian Open, and this time last year she was ranked No. 144; she arrived in Beijing at a career-high No. 34.
The semifinal. Saturday’s opponent is Mirra Andreeva, who finally got past Ekaterina Alexandrova at the third attempt, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (3). The Roland Garros champion dropped just three points in racing to a two-game lead and still needed a tiebreak to close the first set. Alexandrova had beaten her in straight sets on clay in Stuttgart in 2025 and on grass in Bad Homburg in June. “She played unbelievable today, and I’m very happy to get my very first win against her,” Andreeva said.
At 19, Andreeva is the youngest Beijing semifinalist since Agnes Szavay in 2007. It is her fourth WTA 1000 semifinal. She has won three titles this year, including Roland Garros, and is chasing a fourth.
The other half. Zheng Qinwen, a wild card ranked No. 54, beat sixth seed Elina Svitolina 6-3, 7-6 (6) on Friday for her first straight-sets win of the week. She double-faulted on the first point and trailed 0-2 before winning the opener, and fell on her back after converting her second match point in the tiebreak.
“Truthfully, because I really wanted to grab this win, I was really nervous,” Zheng told the crowd. “I played really aggressive in important moments.” It is her second Beijing semifinal after 2024, and comes 15 months after elbow surgery in July 2025, after which she played only one more event that season.
Zheng will play the winner of Friday night’s last quarterfinal, between 2023 champion Iga Swiatek and Elise Mertens. Swiatek leads that head-to-head 2-0 without dropping a set; Mertens arrived having beaten Coco Gauff for the first time in six meetings.
What it means. None of the top three seeds reached the last eight in Beijing — Elena Rybakina and Sabalenka went out in the first week and Gauff fell to Mertens — and the quarterfinals took two more contenders for the season finale with them. In mid-September, Svitolina and Muchova held the last two qualifying places in the Race to the WTA Finals, with Marta Kostyuk and Swiatek chasing. Both lost in the quarterfinals here; Swiatek is still playing. The WTA Finals is at Indian Wells this year. The Beijing final is Sunday, and the last WTA 1000 of the year, the Wuhan Open, starts the next day. How the Finals field is chosen is set out in our WTA Finals qualification explainer.
