Naomi Osaka will open her home tournament against Jasmine Paolini, the pick of the first-round matches at the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo. The draw was released on Saturday, and it puts the seventh-seeded Osaka and the unseeded Italian in the bottom quarter, with second seed Maja Chwalinska waiting in the quarterfinals.
Elena Rybakina is the top seed and the only Top 10 player in the draw. When the WTA announced the field on 1 October, she was one of five: Jessica Pegula, Elina Svitolina, Iga Swiatek and Marta Kostyuk were entered too. None of the four is in the draw. Swiatek ended her season after withdrawing from Ningbo, and Kostyuk stopped after one set of her first match there. Iva Jovic and Anna Kalinskaya, who were also on the original list, are not in the draw either.
Chwalinska, the second seed, is ranked 11th. She, Rybakina, Diana Shnaider and Belinda Bencic have byes into the second round.
Rybakina’s quarter. Rybakina reached the Ningbo final on Saturday by beating Shnaider 6-3, 7-5, and plays Leylah Fernandez for that title on Sunday, the day before the main draw starts in Tokyo. In Tokyo she opens against Maria Sakkari or a qualifier. Fernandez, who beat Marie Bouzkova 6-3, 7-5 in the other Ningbo semifinal, landed in the same quarter. She plays wild card Himeno Sakatsume first, with fifth seed Elise Mertens or wild card Moyuka Uchijima next, so the two Ningbo finalists could meet again in the quarterfinals. Rybakina pulled out of last year’s Tokyo semifinals with back pain after winning two matches.
The defending champion. Bencic, the fourth seed, beat Linda Noskova in last year’s final. This is her seventh appearance in Tokyo; she reached the 2015 final and lost it to Agnieszka Radwanska. She opens against Ann Li or Ekaterina Alexandrova. Sixth seed Sorana Cirstea, in a tournament the WTA said could be the last of her career, plays a qualifier in the same section, and Diane Parry meets Cristina Bucsa.
The bottom half. Shnaider, the third seed, will play Nikola Bartunkova or a qualifier after her bye. Eighth seed Alexandra Eala starts against British wild card Mika Stojsavljevic, and Talia Gibson plays a qualifier in the same section. Below them, Osaka and Paolini meet for a place against wild card Mia Pohankova or a qualifier. Osaka won this tournament in 2019. Chwalinska, who won her first career title in Wuhan last week, plays Wang Xinyu or a qualifier.
How the field filled. Li, Parry, Sakkari and Bartunkova were the first four alternates when the entry list was published, and all four are in the draw. The four wild cards went to Sakatsume, Uchijima, Stojsavljevic and Pohankova. Six more places go to qualifiers from the 24-player qualifying draw, which is played on Saturday and Sunday. How tournaments hand out the extra places is covered in our wild card explainer.
What’s at stake. Tokyo is the last WTA 500 event of the season. The champion earns 500 ranking points and $185,500, from a total commitment of $1,206,446. The tournament is played on outdoor hard courts at the Ariake Coliseum and runs from Monday, 26 October, to the final on Sunday, 1 November. The WTA Finals field is already settled, with Rybakina among the eight qualifiers for Indian Wells from 8 to 15 November; our WTA Finals guide has the details. The WTA 250 in Guangzhou is played the same week. Dates, history and past champions in Tokyo are in our Pan Pacific Open guide, and the Guangzhou field is in our Guangzhou Open guide.
