Iga Swiatek and Mirra Andreeva both lost in Beijing’s fourth round and arrived at the Dongfeng Voyah · Wuhan Open hoping to create some momentum heading into year-end championships.

On Tuesday, the No. 2-seeded Swiatek was the first player to advance to the third round, defeating Marie Bouzkova 6-1, 6-1. She’ll meet the winner of Wednesday’s second-round match between No. 13 seed Belinda Bencic and Elise Mertens.

Andreeva, the No. 5 seed, later fell to Laura Siegemund 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-3. The grueling match required 3 hours and 1 minute.

Since reaching the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in early July, Andreeva’s record is 5-4.

Against Siegemund, who is No. 57 in the PIF WTA Rankings, Andreeva suffered a damaging 15 double faults and had her serve broken eight times. At 37, Siegemund still has an appetite for marquee matches. She upset Australian Open champion Madison Keys in the third round at Wimbledon this summer on the way to the quarterfinals and, in January, took down Zheng Qinwen in the second round at Melbourne.

Siegemund will face the Wednesday winner between No. 12 seed Karolina Muchova and Magdalena Frech, who both won their first-round matches in three sets.

Swiatek dominated Bouzkova’s serve, winning 31 of 51 points and breaking her six times in a match that ran 79 minutes.

The 24-year-old from Poland is now 2-0 against Bouzkova, while the Czech Republic player is now 0-7 for the year against Top 10 players. Bouzkova defeated wild card Camila Osorio 6-3, 6-4 in the first round.

Swiatek was the top seed in Beijing, but fell to Emma Navarro 6-4, 4-6, 6-0.

She’s the No. 2 player in the PIF WTA Rankings and one of the game’s most consistent players. But even the six-time Grand Slam champion knows there’s a far better chance of losing than winning a title. She’s played in 17 events this year and come away with three crowns — Wimbledon, Cincinnati and Seoul. 

“There are many tournaments that you win [and] the next week you lose,” Swiatek told reporters in Wuhan. “So it is disappointing. It’s hard to be winning all the time and be consistent.

“It’s not something I would expect, but I just try to focus on developing and just working every day to play as well as possible.”

That long-term approach has worked nicely for Swiatek, who collected her 60th match-win for 2025. She’s the only woman this century to do it for four consecutive years. Martina Hingis (1997-2001) and Lindsay Davenport (1998-2001) were the last to manage that feat.

Swiatek has been lethally sharp in WTA 1000 events. Look at these numbers:

She’s won 31 consecutive opening matches; since 1990, only Hingis (40) has done better.
This was Swiatek’s 100th straight-sets win — in 153 matches. Only Serena Williams (144) got there in fewer matches.
Since the format came into being, Swiatek’s straight-set win percentage is .654, second to Serena Williams’ .665.

“Every tournament I go to, I want to play my best game,” Swiatek said. “Sometimes I deliver; sometimes not but yeah, my expectation is to just do my best. Honestly, I don’t set goals like semifinal or whatever — just really making it step by step.”

At the age of 18, Andreeva has already placed herself among the sport’s most precocious players. 

Siegemund volleys past Mirra Andreeva in Wuhan; third Top 10 win of 2025

Back in February, she became the youngest player ever to win a WTA 1000 title, in Dubai, then went back-to-back with a triumph at Indian Wells.

But as her year has progressed, Andreeva has been searching for that kind of sustained high-quality consistency.

“I can say that obviously I had a little bit less pressure in the beginning of the year, because nobody really expected that I would win 1000 titles,” Andreeva said before the tournament. “So that was mentally, was a little bit easier. But as I said in Beijing, I just tried to learn how to deal with all of that.”