Weekend Warriors: It's Trophy Time

It's the first Championship Weekend of the season and it should be a good one. Sure, there have been some upsets here and there – OK KAROLINA MUCHOVA I SEE YOU PRISCILLA HON SEES YOU WE ALL SEE YOU – but for the most part, the top dogs are in place across the board across Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong.

Here's what's on the menu:

UNITED CUP: IS THIS THE YEAR FOR POLAND??

• It's Coco vs. Iga and Hubi vs Taylor when defending champion USA take on Poland on Saturday. This will be the SIXTEENTH meeting between Coco and Iga, and I swear these two are on track to break Chrissie and Martina's record 80 meetings. They aren't even 25 yet!
  • Random thought: When it comes to sell-your-soul-for-the-trophy quests, among active players I gotta think Poland trying to win United Cup is up there with Ons and Wimbledon, Aryna and Stuttgart, and Davidovich Fokina and anywhere.

• Poland has lost to the Americans 2 of the last three years. Last year, Coco signaled her legitimate turnaround on her match-up with Iga by beating her 6-4, 6-4. In fact, despite Iga's 11-4 edge, Coco has won the last six sets they played against each other (2024 WTA Finals, 2025 United Cup, 2025 Madrid). Based on their respective forms in the group stage, Iga definitely looks sharper, but this match-up really has turned into a bit of a mental one for Iga now. Which is WILD considering how much it lived rent-free in Coco's head for so long.

• Taylor is 4-2 against Hubie, but again, on form this is Hubie's to win. He narrowly lost out to Alex De Minaur last night and he was locked in through the end. He's been playing well but on top of that, he's been so mentally locked in. As for Taylor, he's been surviving on pure guts. I just don't think he'll hold up to Hubie's rally tolerance right now.

United Cup vignettes

Observations from yours truly

Finite JestAndrea Petkovic

• The other semifinal sees Belinda Bencic's Swiss squad take on Elise Merten's Belgium.
  • How great is it to see Mertens playing so well in singles again? For me, she has always been that "litmus test" on tour. I just don't take new/y0ung talent seriously until they can beat a solid Mertens. She seems well on her way to getting back to that.
  • Hey you know what's surprising? Belinda and Elise HAVE ONLY PLAYED ONCE. Not what you'd expect from these two veterans. Mertens won that meeting at the 2021 Australian Open in straight sets. That was a very different Bencic.

• Australian Open wildcard recipient Stan Wawrinka will take on an outstanding Zizou Bergs, who has been feeling so good about his tennis he's just straight up twerkin':It

BRISBANE WTA 500: IS IT ARYNA'S TO LOSE?

• Here are your semifinals at the first WTA 500 of the year:
  • [1] Aryna Sabalenka vs. [❤️] Karolina Muchova
  • [4] Jessica Pegula vs. [16] Marta Kostyuk
• It gives me nothing but pleasure to inform you that Karolina Muchova has notched two Top 10 wins this week, beating No.10 Alexandrova and snapping No.5 Rybakina's 13-match win streak. Did she call the trainer in the middle of her Rybakina match to assess an ailment? Yes. But after the rain comes the sun, my friends.

• Muchova leads her head-to-head against Sabalenka THREE TO ONE in case you were wondering. BUT Sabalenka has looked fantastic through her straight set wins this week, including over Madison Keys in the last round. It'll be an uphill climb, but that's the only kind of climbing our fragile Czech knows.
• Stat to remember: Muchova has not won a title SINCE BEFORE COVID. That would be 2019 Seoul.

• Another week, another semifinal for the ever-resilient, ever-workhorsey, ever-present Jess Pegula. After needing three sets against Kalinskaya and Yastremska, she had a more clinical time against Liudmila Samsonova in a straight-set win.
• Pegula leads the head-to-head over Kostyuk 4-1, but the Ukrainian has been fired up and fire-ing in Brisbane. She posted back-to-back Top 10 wins over Andreeva and Anisimova to make her first semi since making the final in Stuttgart last April. (WTA)

BRISBANE ATP 250: DANIIL PILGRIM vs. THE WORLD

• Except the world is just America. That's right, it's No.1 seed Daniil Medvedev and a trio of Americans in the Brisbane semifinals. Daniil – WHO'S BIGGEST AND ONLY TITLE SINCE MAY 2023 IS AN ATP 250 IN ALMATY THREE MONTHS AGO – will play 21yo Alex Michelsen in the semifinals. The winner will play either Aleksandar Kovacevic, who recently hired David Witt, or Brandon Nakashima in the final.
• I swear to GOD, Daniil....

HONG KONG ATP 250: TOP THREE SEEDS VS. MARCOS GIRON

• Trust me, my inclination at the current moment is not at all to chat U-S-A in any way shape or form. BUT, it has to be noted how good of an opening week it has been for the professional tennis players who hold an American passport. As a collective, they have acquitted themselves well.
• The Hong Kong semifinals will see Top Seed Lorenzo Musetti play Andrey Rublev. Exciting! Especially given the fact that Musetti is potentially – according to the completely unofficial and sometimes full of errors live rankings – a win away from THE TOP FIVE IN THE ATP RANKINGS. That is....wild. That is the word I am choosing for that.
• TIL: Lorenzo Musetti hasn't won an ATP title since 2022? (ATP)
• The other semifinal sees the ATP's "beloved" "bad boy" Sasha Bublik against Marcos Giron.
• Here's a dispatch from Carole Bouchard, who is on the ground for the tournament Hong Kong:

Long gone are the days when top players could pick an ATP 250 as a warm-up or an easy title to catch. Both Andrey Rublev and Alexander Bublik confirmed it on Friday, while regretting it at the same time! Like, can’t top players have it easy or even easier anymore? If they’re not named Carlos Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner, obviously.

One look at this year’s draw of the Bank of China Hong Kong Tennis Open illustrates the situation. Please, find us the easy matches? They’re nowhere to be seen anymore. A trend that shows the depth of the tour and also how the margins are so thin that top players feel they have to enter every draw that comes to keep their edge and their ranking points.

“I think it’s bad!” said Alexander Bublik (#11, winner of four ATP tour titles last year) when asked about how there were no easy matches anymore out there. “I prefer easy matches. I mean, I like the way tennis was five years ago, when you had a bunch of random people playing. But now it's really like every match, it doesn't matter who you play, a guy 300 in the world, a guy top 10, it's still the same level besides the two guys that we all know of. So for me, for me, it's not good (he laughs). I prefer easy matches.” He nearly had one on Friday against Shang Juncheng, but he blinked, and suddenly the Chinese player was back in the battle, with a set point in the racquet at 6-5. It took a Bublik playing lights out to not only win that first set but also to save himself from going to a third set (6-1, 7-6(2) and qualify for his 23rd ATP tour semifinal.

Andrey Rublev, the 2024 champion here, hasn’t forgotten that he was down a set during his first match in Hong Kong this year and had to dig deep to find a way through Yibing Wu. And on Friday against Nuno Borges, ranked 45 in the world, it wasn’t a walk in the park either for the World No.16 despite that straight set win (6-3, 6-4) in the quarterfinals. 

“Obviously, every player wants to win at the biggest tournaments, but nowadays, even to win a Challenger, being top 20 in the world, is super tough because you have tough players there. Last year, you could find players like Marin Cilic, Fabio Fognini, or Nikoloz Basilashvili out there in these draws! And, same thing, you go to a 250 thinking there's going to be fewer players, and then you have two guys from the Top 10, three or four more from the Top 20, and then to win those titles, OK, maybe you can have one easier match, but sometimes not even that. So it's a smaller event, but it's tougher sometimes to win. So you need to have really your best level ready to win even the small events.” 

Case in point: Rublev, playing his 46th tour-level semifinal, will now have to go through World No.7 Lorenzo Musetti to reach an ATP 250 final. Rough for the top players who have lost a huge part of their margin on the rest of the field and now need to bring their intensity to the maximum for the first matches, thus increasing the pressure on their fitness in the long run. But such a blessing for the lucky fans in the stands who are basically guaranteed the best possible action any day they pick! And for now, the top two seeds, Musetti and Bublik, are still on a collision course for the trophy.

AUCKLAND WTA 250: ELINA vs. DEM KIDS

• Three of the Top Four seeds made it through to the semifinals in Auckland, including 18yo American Iva Jovic and Swaggapino No.1 Alex Eala. Nice to see Jovic continue to back up that win at the WTA 500 in Guadalajara last fall.
• Alex Eala will face Wang Xinyu – another nice week for Xinyu! We love to see it. And Jovic will throw everything she's got against one of the toughest competitors in the game, top-seeded Elina Svitolina.