{"id":300774,"date":"2025-11-22T05:06:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T05:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/300774\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T05:06:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T05:06:19","slug":"impressive-ao-asia-pacific-wildcard-play-off-field-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/300774\/","title":{"rendered":"Impressive AO Asia-Pacific Wildcard Play-off field set"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A talented field will assemble for next week\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/compete\/performance\/ao-asiapacific-wildcard-playoff\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AO Asia-Pacific Wildcard Play-off<\/a> in Chengdu, China with players chasing a coveted main-draw place at Australian Open 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Chengdu\u2019s Sichuan International Tennis Centre will host four play-off events \u2013 men\u2019s and women\u2019s singles, and men\u2019s and women\u2019s doubles \u2013 from 24-29 November.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s depth in the WTA ranks is reflected in the women\u2019s singles acceptance list, with Yuan Yue, Zhu Lin and Wang Yafan \u2013 all former top-50 players \u2013 headed to Chengdu.<\/p>\n<p>A place in the AO main draw would be especially notable for Zhu and Wang, who have previously reached the fourth and third rounds at Melbourne Park, respectively.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Zhu is also preparing to lead Team China at the upcoming United Cup, where she will join forces with Zhang Zhizhen to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unitedcup.com\/en\/media\/news\/united-cup-2026-schedule-released\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">kick off their campaign on 3 January<\/a> in Sydney.<\/p>\n<p>Others among the 16-player women\u2019s field in Chengdu are a Japanese quartet including former world No.56 Nao Hibino and Sara Saito, the teenager who reached her first WTA quarterfinal in Osaka last year.<\/p>\n<p>Former world No.31 Zarina Diyas, of Kazakhstan, will attempt to join those names when she begins her campaign in the qualifying rounds.<\/p>\n<p>The men\u2019s singles event is headlined by Chinese No.1 Bu Yunchaokete, who earlier this year peaked at world No.64.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A talented field will assemble for next week\u2019s AO Asia-Pacific Wildcard Play-off in Chengdu, China with players chasing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-300774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}