2023 Zhengzhou Open WTA Entry List including Rybakina, Vondrousova and Muchova

The WTA 500 Zhengzhou Open has confirmed the WTA Entry List for the final WTA 500-level tournament of the 2023 season.

Following the WTA 1000 Beijing Open, Zhengzhou will be the Chinese city to host the last WTA 500-level event of the year.

With all four Grand Slams and all WTA 1000 tournaments already played (the last one being the week before in Beijing), the Zhengzhou tournament will distribute the most points until the WTA Finals in Cancún, where the top eight players of the year will compete. This makes it a crucial event for players contending for a spot at the Finals.

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Featuring the world's best female tennis players, the tournament will include six players from the top 10 and ten from the top 15, competing in a 32-player draw, ensuring a high level of tennis.

The top contenders for the title will be Elena Rybakina, Marketa Vondrousova, Ons Jabeur, and Karolina Muchova, who are the top four seeds. This means that four out of the seven Grand Slam finalists during the year will be participating, with the top 3 players Sabalenka, Swiatek, and Coco Gauff being absent.

Local hope will undoubtedly rest on Qinwen Zheng, a 20-year-old who recently reached the quarterfinals of the US Open and has garnered excitement among the local fans.

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Zhengzhou has seen rapid growth as a tournament. It started as an ITF event in 2014 and, after three editions, progressed to a WTA 125k event in 2017. In 2019, it made the significant leap to become a WTA 500 tournament, attracting many more top players. In that year, Karolina Pliskova, who was ranked World No. 2 at the time, claimed the title.

Here is the list of the players who will compete in the tournament: