Beijing WTA: Anisimova defends her title, Rybakina on top

In Beijing, women's tennis changes continent and raises the stakes at once. The draw for the China Open, a WTA 1000 on hard courts, has been made: the main draw starts on Wednesday 30 September and the final is scheduled for Sunday 11 October, not before 7 p.m. local time. The event lasts twelve days, has a 96-player draw with 32 seeds getting a first-round bye, and offers 1,000 points to the champion.

Total prize money is $9,415,725: $1,151,380 for the champion and $612,340 for the runner-up. The top seed is Elena Rybakina, followed by Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff and Mirra Andreeva, each heading a quarter of the draw. All four semi-finalists from the latest US Open are in the field, making their first appearance since New York.

The biggest story, though, is the defending champion. Amanda Anisimova won in 2025 by beating Linda Noskova 6-0 2-6 6-2, and she arrives in Beijing in a different position: in the site's live ranking she is No. 16 with 2,363 points, having reached No. 6 on 7 July 2026. She has lost ten places since then, and in her last 10 matches she has 5 wins and 5 losses.

The maths is simple. Last year's title is worth 1,000 points that expire with the 2026 edition: with no result in Beijing, Anisimova would drop to 1,363 points, based on the site's live data and before any other movement. The ranking is tight around her: Naomi Osaka (No. 17) is just 68 points behind, and Sorana Cirstea (No. 15) is 45 ahead. Every round counts, and a good week can change the picture at the end of the season.

Anisimova comes from the latest US Open, where she beat Ashlyn Krueger 6-1 6-3 and Lilli Tagger 6-3 3-6 6-1 before going out in the third round against Anastasia Potapova, 6-2 7-5. In Cincinnati she had reached the quarter-finals, losing to Jessica Pegula 6-4 2-6 7-6 after eliminating Alexandra Eala. A season of ups and downs, in short, and Beijing is a chance to find the thread again.

The most anticipated quarter is the second. At the top is Gauff, the third seed, and at the bottom Iga Swiatek, the eighth. According to the WTA, if they met it would be the 17th chapter of their rivalry: Swiatek leads 11-5, but Gauff won the only 2026 meeting, in straight sets, at the United Cup. Both are former champions here: Gauff in 2024, Swiatek in 2023.

Gauff may be the most in-form player in the field. In her last 10 matches she has 9 wins and a single loss, she won Cincinnati by beating Pegula 6-2 6-4, and in New York she reached the semi-final, beating Andreeva in the quarter-final 2-6 7-6 6-2 before losing to Rybakina 3-6 6-4 6-4. In 2024 in Beijing she beat Karolina Muchova in the final, 6-1 6-3, and she now has 390 points expiring, from last year's semi-final.

Swiatek has had a solid summer: she won Toronto by beating Rybakina in the final 6-2 6-3, reached the semi-final in Cincinnati, where she lost to Pegula 7-5 4-6 6-4, and at the US Open went out in the round of 16 against Qinwen Zheng, 7-5 6-3. In her last 10 matches she has 8 wins and 2 losses. The live ranking has her at No. 10 with 3,499 points, after reaching No. 3 on 7 July 2026.

A curiosity: Zheng herself, who beat Swiatek in New York, plays in Beijing with a wild card and will meet a qualifier in the first round, to be known after qualifying ends on 29 September. Among the first-round matches, the rematch between Paula Badosa and Daria Kasatkina stands out, after their two-day battle at the latest US Open. Elena-Gabriela Ruse faces Lilli Tagger in a first-ever meeting, while Maya Joint takes on Sinja Kraus.

The other quarters also offer plenty. In the first, Rybakina could meet Belinda Bencic, the ninth seed. In the third, Andreeva and Noskova, the fifth seed, could meet in a matchup in which, according to the WTA, Andreeva leads 4-2 in the head-to-head: the latest, in Brisbane, was won by Andreeva 5-7 6-4 7-5. In the fourth, Sabalenka could cross paths with Osaka, the twelfth seed and 2019 champion.

The numbers on Sabalenka-Osaka are balanced: according to the WTA the Belarusian leads 3-2 head-to-head, but Osaka won the latest one, at Wimbledon. Noskova, for her part, arrives in Beijing as last year's finalist: the 650 points from the 2025 final are about to expire, and her quarter is Andreeva's.

Looking at the tournament as a whole, the roll of honour reads like a competition for the big names: Anisimova in 2025, Gauff in 2024, Swiatek in 2023, with Samsonova the losing finalist, beaten 6-2 6-2 by the Pole. In 2025 the doubles final went to Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani, who beat Miyu Kato and Fanny Stollar 6-7 6-3 [10-2]. On the site, the players defending points also include Jessica Pegula, Emma Navarro, Eva Lys, Paolini and Sonay Kartal.

Two questions remain. Can Rybakina, the top seed, after losing the US Open semi-final to Gauff and the Toronto final to Swiatek, get back to winning? And can Anisimova, the defending champion, avoid a ranking slump? The return of the four New York semi-finalists makes any forecast difficult.

What happens now? Qualifying ends on 29 September and the main draw begins on the 30th. The seeds will enter in the second round. The schedule is long: the final is on 11 October, and in the meantime the live points will change from match to match. We will follow every round.