World No. 1 Elena Rybakina will be the top seed at next month’s Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, the final 500-level tournament of the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz season.
She’ll be joined by fellow Top 10 players Jessica Pegula, Elina Svitolina, Iga Swiatek and Marta Kostyuk.
As the last WTA 500 of the season, the Toray Pan Pacific Open will potentially carry significant WTA Finals implications. Svitolina and Karolina Muchova are currently six and seventh, respectively, on the PIF Race to the WTA Finals leaderboard. Linda Noskova is eighth, though because she has won a Grand Slam this season, she’d have to finish below No. 20 on the leaderboard not to qualify. Kostyuk and Swiatek are ninth and 10th, respectively, on the leaderboard as the second-to-last WTA 1000 in Beijing is getting underway.
The Tokyo field will also include Top 20 players Belinda Bencic, Iva Jovic, Diana Shnaider, Sorana Cirstea (in what could potentially be the final tournament of her career), Naomi Osaka, Alexandra Eala, Elise Mertens and Jasmine Paolini. The final four direct entrants are Maja Chwalinska, Anna Kalinskaya, Leylah Fernandez and Ekaterina Alexandrova. The first four main-draw alternates are Ann Li, Diane Parry, Maria Sakkari and Nikola Bartunkova. In addition to the 17 direct entrants, the 28-player field includes six qualifiers, four wild cards and a special exempt spot. The top four seeds will receive byes into the second round.
Bencic is the defending champion in Tokyo. She defeated Varvara Gracheva, Muchova and Sofia Kenin in her first three matches before beating Noskova in the final. This will be her seventh time playing the Toray Pan Pacific Open. She made her debut here in 2013, and reached the final two years later, falling to Agnieszka Radwanska. Osaka is also a former champion in Tokyo, winning this tournament back in 2019. She also made finals here in 2016 and 2018. Rybakina, who is also playing for the year-end No. 1 ranking, won two matches here last year before pulling out of the semifinals with back pain. First-round action in Tokyo will begin on Monday, Oct. 26, and the tournament will run through Sunday, Nov. 1, when both the singles and doubles finals will be played. In addition to 500 ranking points, the Tokyo champion will earn $185,500.
Elena Rybakina followed up her US Open dream run with some much needed shut-eye in China. ‘I’ve been sleeping a lot, not doing much,’ Rybakina told the media in Beijing today. ‘This is what I needed to recover. I didn’t go anywhere yet here in Beijing. Hopefully, yeah, some days after the matches, we will see.’ The second-seeded Rybakina dethroned two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 to capture her maiden US Open championship and third Grand Slam crown last month. The 2022 Wimbledon champion bookends the 2026 season with Slam title trophies ruling Melbourne and reigning as Queen of Queens as the first Kazakh to win the US Open singles championship.
Now, the new world No. 1 has set her sights on a couple of historic goals: Finish 2026 as year-end world No. 1 and win Roland Garros to complete the career Grand Slam. ‘I think at the US Open I said it will be nice to win French Open, then it’s going to be four slams,’ Rybakina said of attaining the career Grand Slam. ‘I mean, now I’m No. 1, which is great. Still it’s not end of the season. I would like to push and finish at No. 1. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen. It’s a lot of good players, a lot of tough opponents. Anything can happen.’ The 2022 Wimbledon winner’s best Roland Garros result is a pair of quarterfinal finishes in 2021 and 2024. Though the strong-serving Rybakina has won Grand Slam titles on grass and hard courts, she has had some success on red clay. The 2023 Rome champion has won Stuttgart, which is typically a faster red clay, two of the last three years. Rybakina defeated Diana Shnaider, Leylah Fernandez, Mirra Andreeva and Karolina Muchova in succession to capture Stuttgart last April. Throughout her career, Rybakina has faced the toughest major road in Paris.
Asked her mind set as world No. 1, Rybakina said she’s focused on staying healthy and enjoying her tennis and time at the top of the sport. ‘I just came No. 1. I feel like the most important is to enjoy,’ Rybakina said. ‘It’s not easy always. For that I have people around me. Sometimes I can be down or up. It’s important to enjoy. I think today was the first practice where I would say, okay, I feel a bit my foot. It was not maybe the greatest feeling that you have some physical issues. I really enjoy the practice. I think that’s the most important. I love to compete.’
