Top 10 players Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Jessica Pegula will head the field at the WTA 500 Korea Open in Seoul next month.
In total, eight of the world's Top 20 players are on the entry list for the outdoor hard-court event, which starts on September 16. After two decades on the calendar, this will be the Korea Open's first edition as a WTA 500 tournament.
It will mark the Seoul tournament debuts for World No.1 Swiatek, a five-time Grand Slam champion, and World No.4 Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion.
World No.6 Pegula is the defending champion at the Korea Open. Pegula defeated Yuan Yue in the final last year, and dropped only one set all week en route to the title.
Embracing her Korean roots! 🇰🇷@JPegula has a special connection to Seoul, this was the place her mother Kim was adopted.💜#KoreanOpen pic.twitter.com/hwwLN7ge9B
— wta (@WTA) October 15, 2023
Daria Kasatkina, Emma Navarro, Liudmila Samsonova, Diana Shnaider and Marta Kostyuk are the other Top 20 players in the PIF WTA Singles Rankings who will be headed to Seoul.
Other main-draw entrants include former World No.1 Karolina Pliskova, Beatriz Haddad Maia, Ekaterina Alexandrova, Yulia Putintseva, Katie Boulter, Ajla Tomljanovic, Anastasia Potapova and last year's runner-up Yuan Yue.
World No.44 Veronika Kudermetova is the last direct entrant into the main draw. At the moment, the top two main-draw alternates are 45th-ranked Magdalena Frech and 47th-ranked Peyton Stearns.
Aside from Pegula, the other former champions entered in the main draw are Pliskova, who won the 2014 title, and Alexandrova, who hoisted the singles trophy in 2022.
The inaugural Korea Open was held 20 years ago in 2004. Maria Sharapova, who was the reigning Wimbledon champion at the time, won that title.
