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Pegula, Zheng, Krejcikova and Osaka highlight WTA 500 Tokyo field

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Pegula - 2023 Tokyo SF
Jimmie48/WTA

Fourteen of the world's Top 20 players are among the participants entered in next month's Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, Japan.

The prestigious outdoor hard-court tournament will be the final WTA 500 event of this year. A host of the Hologic WTA Tour's top players will go for big ranking points in one of the last opportunities to lock up a spot at the season-ending WTA Finals Riyadh.

Action at the Toray Pan Pacific Open begins on October 21, and the main-draw entry list was released this week. World No.3 Jessica Pegula

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After missing many events in the first half of the year due to injury, Pegula surged back to the top of the game this summer, successfully defending her WTA 1000 title in Canada and reaching her first Grand Slam singles final at the US Open.

Pegula is followed on the entry list by World No.7 Zheng Qinwen, who has had a breakthrough summer of her own. Zheng toppled World No.1 Iga Swiatek

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World No.8 Emma Navarro

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and No.10
Barbora Krejcikova
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are the remaining Top 10 players on the entry list. Krejcikova won her second Grand Slam singles title this year at Wimbledon.

The other Top 20 players on the main-draw entry list are Daria Kasatkina

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, Anna Kalinskaya
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,
Liudmila Samsonova
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(the 2022 champion),
Diana Shnaider
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, Maria Sakkari
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,
Marta Kostyuk
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,
Paula Badosa
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and Donna Vekic
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.

Mirra Andreeva

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and 29th-ranked
Elise Mertens
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complete the main-draw direct entries. The first main-draw alternate is World No.31 Magdalena Frech
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, who recently won her first WTA singles title at WTA 500 Guadalajara.

Among the other main-draw alternates is defending champion Veronika Kudermetova

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      Champions Reel: How Veronika Kudermetova won Tokyo 2023

      The tournament also listed on their website that Japanese players Naomi Osaka

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      would receive wild cards into the player field on home soil.

      Former World No.1 Osaka, currently ranked World No.73 in her first year back from maternity leave, won this title in 2019. Uchijima, the current Japanese No.1, made her Top 100 debut this year and is currently ranked World No.63.

      The Toray Pan Pacific Open has been one of the top-tier events in Asia for four decades and boasts other former champions like Stefanie Graf, Martina Navratilova, Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova.