New York, Sep 17 (IANS) American star Jessica Pegula has decided to skip next week’s WTA 500 Singapore Open to recover from the busy campaigns in the hard-court season till the US Open.
The Singapore Open and Korea Open, also being played next week, are the first two tournaments of the Asian Swing. They each kick off on September 21 and will run through September 27.
Pegula announced her decision to give Singapore a miss on social media, pointing to the physical drain caused by her schedule in the United States.
“I’m really disappointed to have to withdraw from Singapore,” Pegula wrote in an Instagram story. “After a long and physically demanding few weeks at the US Open, I’m just not quite ready to get back on court and compete at the level I expect from myself.
“I was really looking forward to playing in Singapore and hope I can come back in the future,” she wrote in her post.
It was quite a busy time in the hard-court swing for Pegula, currently at a career-high No. 3 in the WTA Rankings.
She reached finals in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati, with a run to the Round of 16 in Toronto sandwiched in between, before reaching the semifinals of the US Open for the second straight year.
The 32-year-old went 15-4 in win/loss ratio during the American hard-court swing, and her 50 wins lead the WTA Tour. She’s also currently third on the Race to the WTA Finals leaderboard, with 5,825 points.
Pegula is still scheduled to play the China Open, the first of back-to-back WTA 1000s, at the end of the month.
Pegula was going to be the top seed in Singapore. It will now be World No. 5 Mirra Andreeva. The 28-player field also includes Top 20 players Amanda Anisimova and Alexandra Eala. Maja Chwalinska, Elise Mertens, Barbora Krejcikova and Maria Sakkari will also be in the draw.
–IANS
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