ANALYSIS: Does WTA have a scheduling problem as Korea Open suffers big name cull post US Open

The 2024 Korean Open was supposed to feature some of the best tennis players in the world, but they withdrew in recent days, so let’s explore why.

Withdrawals in themselves are nothing new in tennis as they happen weekly and at many events. Even some of the biggest events in the world, like Wimbledon, aren’t safe from that because top players do withdraw from them as well. Aryna Sabalenka proved it earlier this year when she withdrew from Wimbledon due to a shoulder injury which prevented her from being ready to play at the event.

The upcoming Korea Open suffered from lots of withdrawals, with some really big names dropping out. It’s not an event that has the best position in the calendar because it begins in the second week after the US Open, where most players are still dealing with the fallout from that. Some players who had a deep run at the US Open simply don’t feel physically ready to jump back into the action, while others who might have crashed out earlier than anticipated need some time to reset after the disappointment.

Even the event being a WTA 500 didn’t really change that fact because some of the top names that were supposed to play at the event withdrew from it. We’re going to go over some of the big names who withdrew from the event as well as the reasons why. Chief among them is Elena Rybakina, who has had a very bizarre month but also season. While her tennis has looked pretty sharp when she did play, the Kazakh player dealt with a lot of physical problems this year, which prevented her from playing the way she wanted to play. If we look at her recent results, we can see that it hasn’t been very good.

She crashed out early at the Cincinnati Masters, and then she only played one match in New York. She would withdraw due to yet another physical problem, and it’s just been rather bizarre. She then parted ways with her long-time coach, with plenty of rumours swirling about him. There is not much positive you can say about Rybakina lately, and with this most recent withdrawal from the Korea Open, it’s pretty clear that things aren’t becoming any better. We’ll see over the coming weeks and months what happens with Rybakina, but something is up, and we don’t know the full picture, that much is true.

Iga Świątek is another top name who withdrew from the event literally days before it was supposed to happen. Her final event before this one was the US Open, where she played okay but suffered a somewhat surprising loss to Jessica Pegula. She hadn’t played too much tennis leading up to the US Open, as she was only in action in Cincinnati before that, but she did play at the Olympics, and we’ve seen plenty of players who did that kind of struggle in recent weeks.

It was a lot of things happening all at once with the surface change and Świątek’s own failure to win the gold medal. She was heavily favoured to snatch that medal, and not getting it done certainly left a mark on her. It’s pretty likely that after the US Open disappointment, she just decided to take another week off to properly reset and give herself time to bounce back to her best shape before she starts the Asian swing.

Another player who withdrew in the lead-up to the Korea Open is Jessica Pegula. Her withdrawal from the event makes the most sense because she had a really long stay at the US Open. Not only that, the American played a lot of tennis leading up to it. She won the Canadian Open, which was six matches. She then made the Cincinnati Open, which was again six matches in a short period of time, and a week after that, she played at the US Open, where she played seven more matches as she made the final.

That’s a lot of tennis in a very short period of time, and while she hadn’t played that much this year before that, it’s still a lot of fatigue. The emotional fatigue is another thing that doesn’t get talked about often because the hangover from the US Open will be felt by Pegula for quite some time.

Making the final and losing is a very painful experience, and while she’s a veteran who has lots of experience, she will need some time to process all of that. Rushing to play at the Korea Open didn’t make too much sense, even though it’s a pretty significant event for her, as her mother is Korean.

Even so, she won’t be attending the event this year but rather make her return at one of the WTA 1000 events that are set to be played in the coming weeks as well. After all, she needs to time this pretty nicely so she can arrive at the end of the year in peak form for the WTA Finals.

Those are some of the bigger names that withdrew from the event, and while they all might have different reasons, the underlying cause is simply the calendar. Some events simply don’t have the best position in the calendar, and those close to Grand Slams mostly suffer for it.

The event in Seoul will still be a pretty decent one, with some notable names like Daria Kasatkina, Beatriz Haddad Maia, and others attending, so overall it should still be a good event. Emma Raducanu will also be playing at the event, and she’s likely to get all the media attention while there, especially after butchering the US Open series schedule, which she admitted was a mistake. We’ll see whether she does better with the rest of the year, but for now, Korea Open is where it will start for her.