Birrell wins in Seoul: first WTA title, beats Joint

Kimberly Birrell won the Korea Open in Seoul, the first WTA title of her career for the Australian, born in 1998. In the final she beat fellow Australian Maya Joint 6-4, 6-2, in a derby the women's tour had not seen since 2017.

Seeded second in the Korean WTA 250 draw, Birrell had a tough start: she lost her opening service game and fell behind 0-2. She then won four straight games, closing out the first set in style.

In the second set the script flipped: Joint, the fifth seed, lost all four of her service games, handing the set and the match to her rival on the hard courts of the Seoul Olympic Park Tennis Center.

For the 28-year-old Birrell, it ends a run of two lost finals: in 2024 in Osaka and in 2025 in Chennai. This time, in her third career final, the Australian did not fail.

The title also brings a ranking breakthrough: Birrell rises to number 38 in the WTA rankings with 1,284 points, a new career high reached on 27 September, the day of the final.

Joint, 20, remains at number 99 with 749 points: her career-high ranking, 67th, dates back to 14 August. For her, the Seoul final is still another step forward in her career.

The final was the first-ever meeting between the two compatriots, and Birrell settled it in her favour straight away: 1-0 in their head-to-head, with a two-sets-to-love record and no tiebreaks played.

The tournament, though, carries above all a historic meaning for Australian tennis: Seoul's final is the first all-Australian final on the WTA tour since 2017, when it happened in Strasbourg, and only the third time in the 21st century that two Australians have contested a WTA title.

Birrell's road to the title had already been steep in the third round, against Slovenia's Tamara Zidansek: behind in the second set after losing the first in a tiebreak, the Australian fought back, winning six of the last seven games to prevail 7-6(2), 6-4.

In the round of 16 Birrell beat China's Yexin Ma 7-5, 6-3, while in the quarterfinals she turned around a match against American Katie Volynets, winning in three sets, 2-6, 6-2, 7-5, after also trailing in that contest.

In the semifinal the Australian completed her second three-set win of the day, beating Hungary's Anna Bondar 7-5, 2-6, 6-1, a victory that opened the door to her first final of the season.

Joint's path to the final was more straightforward: a round-of-16 win 6-2, 6-1 over South Korea's Dayeon Back, and a quarterfinal win 6-4, 6-3 over fellow Australian Lanlana Tararudee. In the semifinal her way was cleared by the retirement of Alina Korneeva, who was trailing 5-2 in the first set: the Russian called for a medical timeout and then retired at 6-1, 1-0, after 49 minutes of play.

In the bottom half of the draw, the story of the opening days was another one: the round-of-16 elimination of former Grand Slam champion Jelena Ostapenko, beaten 6-4, 6-1 by Australia's Taylah Preston. Preston was then stopped in the quarterfinals by Korneeva herself, 6-1, 6-4.

The Seoul draw featured 32 players from 16 different nations, with Australia the best-represented nation with four players in the field. A total of 31 matches were played, with 11 tiebreaks and a single retirement, Korneeva's in the semifinal.

At stake were 250 points for the champion, 163 for the runner-up, 98 for the semifinalists, 55 for the quarterfinalists and 30 for those stopped in the round of 16: a full haul for Birrell, which alone explains the leap she made in the rankings in a single week.

The Korea Open's total prize money was 283,347 dollars, a typical figure for a WTA 250 event: far from Grand Slam sums, but high enough to make every point valuable for two players like Birrell and Joint, both outside the world's top 30.

The roll of honour also tells the story of this edition's step up in class compared with the previous two: in 2025 the title went to Iga Swiatek, who beat Ekaterina Alexandrova in the final 1-6, 7-6(3), 7-5, while in 2024 Brazil's Beatriz Haddad Maia beat Daria Kasatkina 1-6, 6-4, 6-1.

In her career, Birrell had closed the 2025 season with a record of 15 wins and 19 losses, 44 percent, in the tour's main tournaments, without titles and with just one final reached; 2024 had ended even worse, 5-8, again without a trophy.

Joint, by contrast, arrives off a much stronger 2025: 29 wins and 21 losses, 58 percent, with two titles and two finals played. In 2024, in her rookie season as a professional, her record had been just 1-2.

With Seoul now behind her, Birrell heads into the closing stretch of the season with a completely new ranking: the career high she has just reached projects her towards higher-category tournaments in the coming weeks of the Asian swing.

For Joint, who at 20 remains one of Australian tennis's most interesting prospects, the Seoul final is further confirmation of her growth in a season worth watching until it ends.