The scheduling of pro tennis is punishing even in the best of times. In the worst of times—how about a one-week turnaround between a Slam and a 1000-level tournament?—players might just decide to bail, no matter the points and money at stake. On paper, Guadalajara is a big event on the WTA schedule, the season’s second-to-last tournament of this stature. In reality, it’s a week spent laboring in unusual conditions (a mile above sea level) at a nonmandatory event right before the tour migrates to Asia. Translation: an impromptu rest week. A wave of withdrawals sapped the tournament of its star power. The US Open champ Coco Gauff wasn’t coming to extend her white-hot 18–1 form; nor would runner-up Aryna Sabalenka be playing her first-ever matches at the world No. 1 ranking on Mexican soil. Also absent were Iga Swiatek, Jessica Pegula, and Elena Rybakina, rounding out the top five. Ditto the Czech bloc (Vondrousova, Muchova, Krejickova, Kvitova). More than half of the top 30 players were missing for one reason or another.
The resulting Guadalajara draw was astonishing, flecked with less familiar names and a couple throwback ones: We’re talking Eugenie Bouchard wild card, Kiki Mladenovic direct entry. (One of those players has already committed to play professional pickleball in 2024.) The final direct entry, the Canadian player Stacey Fung, was ranked No. 226. There’s a huge chasm in this tournament where the best players in the world are supposed to be. For the remaining players, that chasm is shaped like opportunity.
Ons Jabeur got to play as top seed in Guadalajara, but looking about as fatigued and unsettled as she did throughout the Open, she lost in the third round to the skillful pest Martina Trevisan. Jabeur’s loss has cleared the way for Maria Sakkari, the No. 2 seed, who is overdue for some momentum at a big event. It’s been a consummate Maria Sakkari season in some sense. Lots of deep runs—seven quarterfinals, seven semifinals, one final—but zero titles. If she has seemed curiously absent from the popular tennis imagination this summer, that’s because she suffered first-round exits at Roland-Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open. That makes it all the more surprising that she’s managed to hang around in the top 10. Though she seemed to be sitting near the top of the WTA hierarchy at the start of 2022, she has since been displaced by a new raft of talent. A run to the final in Washington was the bright spot of her summer, though she lost that championship match to an insurgent Coco, another sign of the changing times.