The 2024 China Open in Beijing is the first WTA 1000 tournament of the Asian hard-court swing, and the draw for the event has been released.
Running from September 25th to October 6th, there is no doubt that as one of the most popular tournaments on the Tour, the China Open will draw many fans to the National Tennis Center in Beijing.
However, the tournament also lost a lot of the star power in recent weeks, as Iga Swiatek withdrew from the China Open, and not long after, Elena Rybakina also announced her withdrawal from the tournament in Beijing.
That leaves the recent US Open champion, Aryna Sabalenka, as the top seed in the draw. While this time she's the top seed thanks to Swiatek's withdrawal, soon she might overtake the Polish player and become the top seed on merit.
Like all seeded players in a newly expanded 96-player draw at the China Open, Sabalenka will start with a first-round bye, meaning her first match will be in the second round, and the draw was nice to her, as she will play against one of the qualifiers.
On the opposite side of the draw is the second-seeded Jessica Pegula, who played against the Belarusian in that US Open final. The American player will meet either a qualifier or Diane Parry in the second round of the tournament.
Many players will want to use Swiatek's and Rybakina's absence to their advantage, and one of them will be Coco Gauff, who lost 11 of the 12 matches she played against the Polish player.
Gauff split with coach Brad Gilbert after the 2024 US Open, and she will want to bounce back in Asia. In Beijing, she is the fourth seed, starting against the winner of the match between Caroline Dolehide and Clara Burel in the second round of the tournament.
The third seed is one of the best performers at Grand Slams in 2024, Jasmine Paolini. The Italian will want to use the significant ranking boost from reaching the French Open and Wimbledon finals to help her accumulate more points and being a seed at the China Open will certainly help her with that.
Like all seeded players, she will start in the second round of the tournament, and her first opponent in the Chinese capital will be either Harriet Dart or Clara Tauson.
There are plenty of unseeded players in the China Open draw that could go far and have experience winning. One of them is Emma Raducanu, who will play against one of the qualifiers in the first round and if she wins, she will play against the fifth-seeded Qinwen Zheng, who will have the home crowd behind her.
Naomi Osaka is another former major champion in the draw. The Japanese player will start against Lucia Bronzetti in the first round, and if she succeeds, she will meet the 21st-seeded Yulia Putintseva. The full draw for the 2024 China Open can be seen below.
| Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|
| Aryna Sabalenka [1] | BYE |
| Qualifier/LL | Qualifier/LL |
| Yafan Wang | Ashlyn Krueger |
| BYE | Lulu Sun [29] |
| Madison Keys [18] | BYE |
| Xinyu Gao | Qualifier/LL |
| Qualifier/LL | Sijia Wei |
| BYE | Beatriz Haddad Maia [13] |
| Liudmila Samsonova [11] | BYE |
| Xinxin Yao | Cristina Bucsa |
| Qualifier/LL | Elisabetta Cocciaretto |
| BYE | Elise Mertens [24] |
| Yue Yuan [30] | BYE |
| Anna Blinkova | Karolina Muchova |
| Anna Bondar | Jaqueline Cristian |
| BYE | Barbora Krejcikova [7] |
| Jasmine Paolini [3] | BYE |
| Harriet Dart | Clara Tauson |
| Moyuka Uchijima | Han Shi |
| BYE | Magda Linette [31] |
| Mirra Andreeva [17] | BYE |
| Yexin Ma | Irina-Camelia Begu |
| Viktorija Golubic | Xiyu Wang |
| BYE | Donna Vekic [16] |
| Daria Kasatkina [9] | BYE |
| Melling Wang | Qualifier/LL |
| Camila Osorio | Ajla Tomljanovic |
| BYE | Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova [19] |
| Dayana Yastremska [25] | BYE |
| Yufei Ren | Nadia Podoroska |
| Qualifier/LL | Emma Raducanu |
| BYE | Qinwen Zheng [5] |
| Jelena Ostapenko [8] | BYE |
| Elina Avanesyan | Qualifier/LL |
| Qualifier/LL | Laura Siegemund |
| BYE | Katerina Siniakova [27] |
| Leylah Fernandez [20] | BYE |
| Jessica Bouzas Maneiro | Peyton Stearns |
| Varvara Gracheva | Qualifier/LL |
| BYE | Anna Kalinskaya [10] |
| Marta Kostyuk [14] | BYE |
| Katie Volynets | Qualifier/LL |
| Lucia Bronzetti | Naomi Osaka |
| BYE | Yulia Putintseva [21] |
| Katie Boulter [26] | BYE |
| Martina Trevisan | Taylor Townsend |
| Clara Burel | Caroline Dolehide |
| BYE | Coco Gauff [4] |
| Emma Navarro [6] | BYE |
| Shuai Zhang | McCartney Kessler |
| Greet Minnen | Erika Andreeva |
| BYE | Anastasia Potapova [28] |
| Magdalena Frech [23] | BYE |
| Qiang Wang | Qualifier/LL |
| Sofia Kenin | Ana Bogdan |
| BYE | Diana Shnaider [12] |
| Paula Badosa [15] | BYE |
| Lesia Tsurenko | Viktoriya Tomova |
| Anhelina Kalinina | Bernarda Pera |
| BYE | Ekaterina Alexandrova [22] |
| Veronika Kudermetova [32] | BYE |
| Amanda Anisimova | Xinyu Wang |
| Diane Parry | Qualifier/LL |
| BYE | Jessica Pegula [2] |