Ekaterina Alexandrova meant nothing but business in her opening-round match against Jaqueline Cristian as she hurried past the Romanian, 6-1, 6-2, in just over an hour. The third seed has now equaled her performance in Tokyo from two years ago when she played without a bye and bowed out in the quarterfinals.
This is turning out to be a productive but bittersweet Asian swing. Searching for her first title since Linz in the first week of February, the Russian rose into the WTA 500 finals in Seoul and Ningbo, but lost both championship matches with three-set scorelines to the likes of Iga Swiatek and Elena Rybakina, respectively.
In the larger picture, the 30-year-old is putting finishing touches on what has been the best season of her career. She has won multiple matches in 14 of her last 16 tournaments, already played ten quarterfinals in the last ten months (8-2), become at least the finalist in four events, and confirmed her top-10 debut last week.
Sofia Kenin arrived in Tokyo having not won two matches in a row since qualifying for Berlin over four months ago. The former Australian Open champion ended the drought at the cost of a couple of Japanese players, crushing Moyuka Uchijima, 6-1, 6-3, but needing nothing short of a third-set tiebreak against Wakana Sonobe.
In fact, she fended off all four breakpoints in the third set before edging the reigning junior Australian Open champion, 3-6, 6-1, 7-6, in the late evening second-round tussle. Moving on, she would be pleased to have reached her fourth WTA quarterfinal of the season (1-2) and the first since the runner-up finish in Charleston in April.
It ought to be noted that last year as well the American landed in Tokyo having not won consecutive matches in over four months. Quite memorably, she went on to march into the final of this prestigious WTA 500 tournament and settled as the runner-up to Zheng Qinwen; it’s been five and a half years since her last WTA title.
Head-to-head: Ekaterina Alexandrova leads 1-0. The pair are about to meet in the Asian swing for the second season in a row. Last year the Russian had the upper hand in the first-round clash in Wuhan and came out as the winner in three sets. She is not only expected to repeat the result but might as well be doing so in straights.