We're down to the last eight at the China Open, and each of the quarterfinalists has brought their A game to get to this stage. Seeded favorites Aryna Sabalenka and Zheng Qinwen have stamped their authority on their opponents; unseeded outsiders Yuliia Starodubtseva and Zhang Shuai have shown they have the game to belong here.
Which of them played your favorite point so far? Vote below.
Beijing: Scores | Order of Play | Draws
Aryna Sabalenka had to be sharp to keep on top of the big-hitting Ashlyn Krueger in the third round. The young American showed how dangerous she could be with an injection of pace on a running forehand pass. But Sabalenka showed off her much-improved variety and reflexes with this backhand volley at full stretch, loading it with both the spin and angle that took it curving away from Krueger.
How does Karolina Muchova do it? Even rewatching this point from her third-round match, you'd swear there was no room for the Czech to find the angle on the pass that she did. Jaqueline Cristian had closed the net down, and anticipated Muchova's cross-court direction. But somehow, Muchova managed to land the ball on the line, closer to the net than the service line and out of Cristian's reach.
All of Mirra Andreeva's skills were on show in this Houdini act of a point in the third round. The 17-year-old withstood Donna Vekic's heavy artillery before correctly anticipating the Croatian's attempt at a wrong-footing drive volley. Silky hand skills from Andreeva lofted a pinpoint lob over Vekic's head, and she was swift to move forward to put away her own drive volley.
Olympic gold medallist Zheng Qinwen's homecoming run has been characterized by lethal baseline firepower this fortnight. That was on show in one of her toughest moments so far, an early tussle with Nadia Podoroska in the third round that saw her face five break points in a single game. She swatted away the fifth and last with a clever combination of a full-blast baseline smash, followed by an unexpectedly delicate sliced forehand that bamboozled Podoroska utterly.
Getting past Laura Siegemund at net is no mean feat. But even the German couldn't put a Yuliia Starodubtseva away in their first-round match. Scrambling from corner to corner, Starodubtseva withstood a series of Siegemund volleys -- then found the angle to steal the point with a backhand pass.
It's no secret that an effective strategy against Coco Gauff is to attack her forehand. That's just what Naomi Osaka did at the start of their fourth-round match, peppering that wing with her hardest blows. Gauff's response was perfect: taking all the pace out of the rally with this sudden drop shot switch up. It took Osaka completely unawares.
A no-look backhand drop shot on the run? No problem for Zhang Shuai, whose top form in Beijing has put her prior 24-match losing streak firmly behind her. Greet Minnen seemed to have found a winning angle in this high-octane baseline exchange during their third-round tilt, but Zhang outfoxed the Belgian with an unexpected slice of genius.
A point from the second round that encapsulates Paula Badosa's sheer tenacity. The Spaniard was on the run for most of this rally as Viktoriya Tomova pushed her from line to line. But when Tomova approached the net to finish the point, a running backhand pass from Badosa flipped it around. Tomova got her racquet on it, but couldn't put the volley away; a quick-thinking Badosa hared up to it and lofted a winning lob over Tomova's head.
