Elena Rybakina between Jasmine Paolini and the WTA Finals

After her doubles victory with Sara Errani at the WTA 1000 in Beijing, Jasmine Paolini has jumped to the top of the doubles WTA Race, paired with the Romagnola: the Azzurre are certain to play the WTA Finals in Riyadh, but the same is not true for the Tuscan as far as singles is concerned.

Paolini is currently ninth in the singles WTA Race with 3,741 points, just 65 lengths behind Kazakh Elena Rybakina, who occupies the ’eighth position – the last useful place to qualify for the WTA Finals – at 3,806.

To peel off the pass to Riyad to the Azzurra will need to score more points than Rybakina in the next three tournaments they will both play: the WTA 1000 in Wuhan, underway on the concrete courts of the”Optics Valley International Tennis Center’ and the WTA 500 in Ningbo, scheduled for Oct. 13-19, and Tokyo to be played Oct. 20-26.

She will therefore need to get a better result than the Kazakhstan player starting with the “Dongfeng-Voyah Wuhan Open” in which Paolini has been drawn at the bottom of the draw and could debut in a derby against Lucia Bronzetti, while Rybakina is at the top and will debut with the winner of the match between McCartney Kessler and Jaqueline Cristian.