Beijing: Bartunkova beats Sabalenka, top two seeds out

The China Open in Beijing has lost its second top seed. On Sunday Nikola Bartunkova beat Aryna Sabalenka 6-4 6-3 in the third round of the WTA 1000 on the Chinese hard courts and booked a place in the last 16. The match lasted one hour and 35 minutes and is the biggest win for the 20-year-old Czech.

The result comes just a day after the exit of Elena Rybakina, world No. 1 and top seed. According to the WTA, it is the first time since 2015 that the top two seeds have failed to reach the last 16 in Beijing. The tournament has suddenly lost the two leading names everyone expected on the eve.

Let's start with the match. Sabalenka, No. 2 in the WTA rankings with 7,930 points according to the site's live data, could not find the decisive shot: in the first set she created five break points and converted none, according to the WTA. Bartunkova, on the other hand, converted three of eight over the course of the match, and that made the difference.

The 6-4 first set shifted the momentum. In the second set Bartunkova closed it out 6-3 and kept Sabalenka from getting back into the match: the Belarusian never found the turning point she was looking for.

For Bartunkova it is a result that matters in her personal numbers too. With this win she reaches two career victories over top-10 players, with a record of 2-5 against that level of opponent. It is also her second last-16 appearance at a WTA 1000, and in 2026 she already has 22 wins, 16 of them on hard courts, according to the WTA.

To get here the Czech had beaten Magdalena Frech 6-2 6-2 in the previous round. Bartunkova is now No. 34 in the WTA rankings, which is also her career high, reached on 1 September 2026. She has gained 14 places since 12 July. In her last ten matches followed by the site she has seven wins and three losses.

Her hard-court season has had other important moments. The site's player page shows the semifinal in Monterrey, a WTA 500, where she lost to Elise Mertens, and the third round at the U.S. Open, where she lost to Mirra Andreeva 6-2 7-6. In 2025, in the tournaments followed by the site, she finished with two wins and two losses: this year's leap is evident.

On the other side of the net is a player used to very different results. Sabalenka was world No. 1 on 7 July 2026 and reached the final of the U.S. Open. In 2025 she won four titles with a record of 58 wins and 11 losses, and she is now 1,906 points behind Rybakina and 956 ahead of Gauff, who is third.

Beijing remains a difficult tournament for her, though. According to the WTA, Sabalenka has never reached the semifinals in five appearances, with three quarterfinals (in 2018, 2023 and 2024). This time she stops earlier, and the points tally will be felt: over the next six weeks she has 890 points to defend.

The day before it was Rybakina's turn. On Saturday the No. 1 lost 3-6 6-4 6-3 to Alina Charaeva, an unseeded player ranked No. 118, making her Beijing debut. According to the AP, the match lasted two hours and 11 minutes, with seven double faults for Rybakina and five of eight break points converted by Charaeva.

Also according to the AP, Rybakina became only the second player to lose her first match as world No. 1, after Naomi Osaka in 2019. Charaeva won 76% of the points on her first serve and is the ninth player outside the top 100 to beat a No. 1 since the rankings were first published in 1975.

The picture, at this point, opens up. Sinja Kraus is also already in the last 16; the site shows she beat Maya Joint 6-3 3-6 7-5 in her opener, then Anastasia Potapova by retirement at 4-1 and finally Dayana Yastremska 6-1 6-4. Big names such as Gauff, Swiatek and Andreeva remain in the draw, having won their latest round.

The tournament has a 96-player draw, with 32 seeds given a first-round bye. The site records 61 matches played so far, 13 tie-breaks, 21 matches decided in a third set, four sets that ended 6-0 and two retirements. The longest match was Paula Badosa Gibert versus Daria Kasatkina, 4-6 7-6(7) 6-4, lasting 33 games.

The list of past champions is a good gauge of the tournament's importance. In 2025 Amanda Anisimova won, beating Linda Noskova 6-0 2-6 6-2 in the final. Before her came Cori Gauff in 2024, with a 6-1 6-3 win over Karolina Muchova, and Iga Swiatek in 2023, with a 6-2 6-2 win over Liudmila Samsonova.

The weight of the title is also clear in the rankings: the champion receives 1,000 points, the finalist 650, the semifinalists 390 and the quarterfinalists 215. Anisimova, for example, is defending the title and so the 1,000 points of the 2025 edition, while Noskova must confirm the 650 of the final.

And now? Bartunkova returns to court in the last 16. The draw has shed two heavyweight names, but the road to the final, scheduled for Sunday 11 October, remains long and full of opponents who have already won major titles. All we can do is follow her round by round, with the site's live numbers.

For Sabalenka the calendar does not stop: the record of a season as a Slam finalist and world No. 1 remains excellent, but the points to defend over the next six weeks force her to find rhythm and certainty again quickly. Beijing has lost one of its favorites, and that is the real news of the Chinese Sunday.

The rest of the week will tell whether Bartunkova's surprise is a one-off or the start of something bigger. For now one certainty remains: in today's WTA no draw is truly written in advance, and the China Open is showing it better than any other tournament.