With not much happening on the men’s scene at the moment, the full attention should be over in the women’s game where there are some big tournaments around. The Wuhan Open is a great build-up event to next week’s China Open and there are two big factors surrounding the tournament. Well, three if you count winning the title of course. There is a three-way scrap for the World Number One spot at the tournament and there is also valuable points to be picked up in the race to Singapore and the WTA Finals.
Big Guns Fall
There is a big trend already showing up in the tournament if you look at the first round alone. A lot of the leading pack all took heavy tumbles. There are eight spots at the WTA Finals, seven of them still to be filled and notably Johanna Konta, Kristina Mladenovic and Sloane Stephens, all of which are hovering around the bottom of the qualifying spots, all crashed in the first round in Wuhan. US Open losing finalist Madison Keys went down as well, with defending champion Petra Kvitova taking an early exit and Angelique Kerber fell at the first hurdle too.
Main Contenders
It leaves Gabrine Muguruza, Simona Halep and Karolina Pliskova as the frontrunners to win the tournament. These are the three battling for the number one spot in the world, which Muguruza holds at the moment. Of the three of these, Pliskova is the underdog as she has just gone off the boil a bit while the other two are sustaining consistency. Muguruza has been in fine nick since her Wimbledon win, while Simona Halep isn’t letting up either and won over Muguruza in Cincinnati before the US Open. The thing about this is that Muguruza and Pliskova are on collision course for a clash in the semi finals, while Halep has a much easier run in the other half of the draw and the Romanian gets our nod of the three at 5/1.
Caroline Wozniacki
But with the big guns falling early, that could spark a trend and therefore it is worth looking at a bigger priced option to come through the field and that would be Caroline Wozniacki at 50/1 with William Hill. She went to back to back Finals in Bastad and then the Rogers Cup (losing both of them) and although the US Open was a write-off, as it was for most of the big guns, she bounced back to win in Japan, beating Muguruza in the semi finals. That’s a great pre-cursor for her to get a bigger win on the Asian swing. With a very comfortable draw through to the quarters, Wozniacki can impress.