The 2024 Korea Open will run from September 16th to 22nd, and the draw for the WTA 500 event has been unveiled.
After the sport of tennis spent over a month in North America, it's moving to Asia, and one of the first stops is the Republic of Korea. Its capital, Seoul, will once again play host to a WTA event with some very interesting players taking part.
It's a WTA 500 event, even though the draw was made weaker with some late withdrawals. In the past week, the tournament lost players like Elena Rybakina, Jessica Pegula, and Iga Swiatek, who were all set to play but withdrew from the tournament.
Even so, there are still some great players in the draw who will fight for the trophy in Seoul. The top seed is Daria Kasatkina, and like all top four seeded players, she has a first-round bye.
After that, she will face either Sloane Stephens or Hailey Baptiste. A potential matchup with Emma Raducanu in the quarter-final should excite fans in Korea, but it remains to be seen whether both players can make it to that stage.
Raducanu will be facing Peyton Stearns in the first round, and that's a very tough matchup. The American might not have the most famous name in tennis, but she's played well this year and won't be an outsider against Raducanu.
In the following quarter, the fourth seeded Diana Shnaider is expected to come out on top. The Russian has played superb tennis for much of this year, especially on hard courts.
Marta Kostyuk is the biggest threat in her quarter of the draw, and should they meet, that will be a fierce matchup. It would be a matchup with two very aggressive hitters who have been on top form lately, which can happen in the quarter-finals, as Kostyuk is the fifth seed, starting against Arantxa Rus.
The next quarter has the third-seeded Beatriz Haddad Maia and the seventh-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova as the highest-ranked player, two players who have similar capabilities.
Both are tall with powerful serves and a strong but inconsistent baseline game. Should they meet in the quarter-final, both could be potential threats to make a deep run to the final.
The final quarter features many Russian players, both with and without a Russian passport. In the first round, Russian-born Yulia Putintseva will face ethnic Russian Amanda Anisimova.
That's a brilliant matchup between two very good players, and whoever wins that one will face either Tatjana Maria or Viktoriya Tomova.
The final lines in the draw feature Russians again. In one of those matches, Veronika Kudermetvoa will take on Shuai Zhang, with the winner playing against the second-seeded Liudmila Samsonova.
| Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|
| Daria Kasatkina [1] | BYE |
| Sloane Stephens | Hailey Baptiste |
| Peyton Stearns | Emma Raducanu |
| Qualifier | Yue Yuan [8] |
| Diana Shnaider [4] | BYE |
| Dayeon Back | Qualifier |
| Qualifier | Qualifier |
| Arantxa Rus | Marta Kostyuk [5] |
| Ekaterina Alexandrova [7] | Qualifier |
| Magdalena Frech | Qualifier |
| Ajla Tomljanovic | Su Jeong Jang |
| BYE | Beatriz Haddad Maia [3] |
| Yulia Putintseva [6] | Amanda Anisimova |
| Tatjana Maria | Viktoriya Tomova |
| Veronika Kudermetova | Shuai Zhang |
| BYE | Liudmila Samsonova [2] |