The Week in Preview: Beijing, Tokyo

[rezaomo]

In tennis, it seems, the shorter you make the schedule, the more jam-packed it must become. In recent years, the WTA has laudably cut its season by nearly a month, so that it ends in late October. Unfortunately, the goal of shortening the schedule has run smack into another of the sport's goals: Growing the game in Asia. With fewer weeks available for the tour’s fall swing through that continent, where was the WTA going to fit a big new tournament in China, if one came along?
We found out last year when the $2.5 million event in Wuhan was wedged between the Premier event in Tokyo and the Premier Mandatory event in Beijing. That’s a lot of travel and tennis in a short amount of time, and this year the strain has led to more than a few early exits and withdrawals. Even before I began my Beijing preview below, the tournament had already lost its top two seeds, Simona Halep and Petra Kvitova.
For those of us who get to watch rather than play, though, more in-season tennis is not such a bad thing. There were a lot of great matches in Wuhan last week, and Beijing, even without Simona, and Petra (not to mention Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova), looks set to give us quite a few more. That includes the men’s draw—which, by the way, includes Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Here’s a look at the week ahead in China and Japan. It's a big one for both tours

Novak Djokovic is unbeaten at the China Open, but he'll face tough competition this year: 10 of the ATP Top 20, including Rafael Nadal, will be playing. (AP)