Wuhan Open hit hard – Five top-20 stars out as Kasatkina joins withdrawal list

The Wuhan Open—which kicks off this Monday with its first round—is the last WTA 1000 of the season, though it will unfortunately feature a long list of absences, to which World No. 20 Daria Kasatkina has just been added. Up to nine top-level players will miss the tournament, including Zheng Qinwen, Madison Keys, and Paula Badosa.

After a busy season, which has been in full swing since the last days of December with the United Cup starting the year, several of the WTA's biggest stars have suffered injuries in the final part of the season. The Asian swing has seen significant last-minute withdrawals, with the Wuhan Open being one of the tournaments that will lament the most absences so far this season.

The most recent to join the list was former World No. 8 Daria Kasatkina. The Australian No. 1 hasn't had a good run in recent months, and after consecutive defeats in the debuts of the Korea Open and China Open, Kasatkina decided to withdraw from the tournament.

One of the key withdrawals will undoubtedly be local star Zheng Qinwen (No. 9), who will bring a forgettable second half of 2025 to an end. After her appearance at Wimbledon (first-round defeat), she underwent surgery that kept her out of competition for nearly three months. She returned to the courts at the China Open but had to retire during her Round of 32 match against Linda Noskova in the third set due to an elbow setback. She won't be in Wuhan (where she was defending the final), nor in Ningbo, so her exit from the top-10 in the coming weeks is certain.

The other key name is Madison Keys—the Australian Open champion from the start of the season—who decided to skip the entire Asian swing due to a shoulder injury. World No. 7 still has one last tournament to play: the WTA Finals, for which she qualified for the second time in her career.

Players who have already ended their season are Elina Svitolina (No. 13) and Paula Badosa (No. 18). The Ukrainian played her last tournament in the Billie Jean King Cup at the end of September, and later announced it would be her last of the year due to not being in the right "emotional space" and needing to "heal and recharge." Meanwhile, the Spaniard continues to lament her back injury after withdrawing from the China Open and won't return until 2026.

Daria Kasatkina (No. 20) recently joined them, though she has not disclosed the reason for her withdrawal. For now, she remains entered in the Ningbo Open and Tokyo Open in the coming weeks, so she is expected to return to the courts within a week.

The main Czech stars are suffering again due to injuries, which have caused them to lose consistency on the tour and fall in the rankings. The two-time Grand Slam champion Barbora Krejcikova (No. 32) retired during the China Open third round after a fall and announced she would travel back to Europe for her recovery, implying she won't return to the courts this year.

She is joined by her compatriot—the 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova (No. 36)—who played her last tournament at the US Open, reaching the quarterfinals after eliminating two top-10 players, Jasmine Paolini and Elena Rybakina, along the way. However, she couldn't take the court against Sabalenka—giving her a walkover to the semifinals—and shortly after announced she was ending her season.

Other names also out of the Wuhan Open are the Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia (No. 40), who, like Svitolina, ended her season due to burnout. The South American was defending a good number of points in this Asian swing, and her absence in Beijing already caused her to fall outside the top-25 for the first time in three years. The Czech Karolina Pliskova—who was set to return with a protected ranking—also ended up withdrawing, after playing two tournaments in the last month (1-2 record).