Mirra Andreeva, Amanda Anisimova, Alexandra Eala and Elise Mertens will all start the week in the second round. The top four seeds have byes in the 28-player draw at the Singapore Tennis Open, which opened the WTA’s Asian swing on Monday alongside the Korea Open in Seoul.
Singapore has moved up to a WTA 500 this year and moved across the calendar. Mertens won it last season, when it was played in February after the Australian swing, so she arrives as the defending champion of a tournament that is seven months later than the one she won. Seoul has gone the other way. The Korea Open was a 500 for the past two seasons and is a WTA 250 in 2026, according to the WTA.
Singapore seeds. Andreeva (1), Anisimova (2), Eala (3), Mertens (4), Maja Chwalinska (5), Leylah Fernandez (6), Maria Sakkari (7), Donna Vekic (8).
Who the top four play first. Andreeva meets Daria Kasatkina or Aliaksandra Sasnovich. Mertens meets Barbora Krejcikova or Anna-Lena Friedsam. Eala meets Tatiana Prozorova or Sofia Costoulas. Anisimova meets Talia Gibson or Fiona Ferro. Among the other seeds, Fernandez opens against Kyoka Okamura, Chwalinska against Rebecca Sramkova, Sakkari against Linda Fruhvirtova and Vekic against Wang Xinyu.
How the draw falls. By seeding, the quarterfinals would be Andreeva against Fernandez, Mertens against Chwalinska, Eala against Vekic and Anisimova against Sakkari, with Andreeva and Mertens in the top half and Eala and Anisimova in the bottom. The winner takes 500 ranking points and the runner-up 325, according to the WTA. The singles final is on Sunday 27 September, not before 5 p.m. in Singapore, which is 5 a.m. ET.
Seoul. Jelena Ostapenko is the top seed in a 32-player draw at the Seoul Olympic Park Tennis Center, with no byes, and opens against Anastasia Zakharova. Kimberly Birrell is seeded second, followed by Lanlana Tararudee, Elena-Gabriela Ruse, Maya Joint, Anna Bondar, Magda Linette and Kamilla Rakhimova. Sofia Kenin, unseeded, plays Alina Charaeva. Three Korean players are in the first round: Sohyun Park against Robin Montgomery, Dayeon Back against Yuan Yue and Yeonwoo Ku against the qualifier Alevtina Ibragimova.
Iga Swiatek won Seoul last year, beating Ekaterina Alexandrova 1-6, 7-6(3), 7-5 in the final, according to the WTA. She is not in this year’s draw. The winner this week takes 250 points, and the final is on Sunday 27 September, not before 3:30 p.m. local time, which is 2:30 a.m. ET.
What the week is for. Both events are the last stop before the China Open in Beijing, the second-to-last WTA 1000 of the season, which begins on 29 September and is where Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka are scheduled to play their first tour-level event since the US Open final, according to the WTA. The Wuhan Open follows. The WTA lists 10 tour-level events over the seven weeks of the swing, the last push toward the WTA Finals at Indian Wells. In the Race standings the WTA published on 17 September, Rybakina had already qualified and Andreeva was fifth. For the full shape of the swing, see the Asian swing explained.
