Tennis This Week: Andreeva in Final, 10 Oct

As of midday on Saturday 10 October 2026, Istanbul time, tennis this week is still split between Beijing and Shanghai. In Beijing the first of the women's semi-finals has been played: Mirra Andreeva beat Nikola Bartunkova 6-2, 6-2 to reach the final, and the Zheng Qinwen–Elise Mertens semi-final follows in the evening session. In Shanghai the second round is being completed: on Friday night Zhou Yi, the home player ranked No. 277 in the world, knocked out Lorenzo Musetti, and on Saturday Daniil Medvedev, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Rafael Jodar all won after losing the first set. We covered the Beijing quarter-finals and Hubert Hurkacz's win over Novak Djokovic in the tennis roundup of 9 October; today's piece starts with what has changed since.

Where the matches are being played

The women are in Beijing, at the China Open, a WTA 1000 event. The tournament has reached its last two days on the outdoor hard courts of the National Tennis Center: the semi-finals are today and the final is on Sunday 11 October.

The men are in Shanghai. The Shanghai Masters, an ATP Masters 1000 event, is played at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena, also on outdoor hard courts, and ends on 18 October. The main draw has 96 players; because the 32 seeds received a first-round bye, the second round was spread over two days, with the top half on Friday and the bottom half on Saturday.

A hard court makes the bounce predictable, but it does not make matches short. Between two players who hold serve, a set is often decided by a single break or a tie-break, and most of the notable matches in Shanghai over the last two days went to three sets. We looked at how the tone of the surface and the lines shape what you see in our piece on court surfaces and their colours.

Beijing: Mirra Andreeva is the first finalist

In the first semi-final of the day, fourth seed Mirra Andreeva beat 26th seed Nikola Bartunkova 6-2, 6-2 to reach the China Open final. The two had met once before, in the third round of this year's US Open, and Andreeva won that match too, 6-2, 7-6(5). This time the second set did not go to a tie-break.

In the quarter-finals Andreeva had needed two tie-breaks to get past Ekaterina Alexandrova; in the semi-final she dropped four games in two sets. The score shows that, unlike that closely balanced quarter-final, the sets this time were closed out well before a tie-break.

For Bartunkova the tournament ends with her first WTA 1000 semi-final. The 20-year-old had beaten Aryna Sabalenka and Karolina Muchova, both in straight sets, along the way; even with the semi-final defeat, she was one of the players who changed the draw most this week.

The second semi-final is between Zheng Qinwen, who entered the main draw on a wild card, and 13th seed Elise Mertens; it will not start before 7 pm local time (2 pm in Istanbul). Zheng won their only previous meeting, in Charleston in 2025, in three sets, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3. Mertens is in a WTA 1000 semi-final for the first time since 2021 and is also due to play a doubles semi-final with Diana Shnaider on the same day. The load of a two-match day can be counted as one factor, but there is no basis for saying it will be decisive on its own.

Player of the day: Zhou Yi

The last upset of Friday night in Shanghai came in front of a home crowd. Zhou Yi, a wild card ranked No. 277 in the world, beat the seeded Lorenzo Musetti 7-6(7), 3-6, 7-6(1). The match lasted 2 hours and 28 minutes; Zhou hit 14 aces and saved four of the five break points he faced.

Zhou had also come through his first-round match against Mattia Bellucci in a final-set tie-break. With this win he reached the third round of a Masters 1000 event for the first time; according to the ATP he is the third-lowest-ranked player to reach the third round in Shanghai.

The shape of the score tells the story: both sets Zhou won ended in a tie-break, so the difference was not a break of serve but a handful of points in the shortest format of all. The first tie-break was as close as it gets at 9-7, the last one was one-sided at 7-1. The support of the home crowd can be counted as one factor; even so, 14 aces show that Zhou left little to chance in his own service games.

Zhou's third-round opponent is Hubert Hurkacz, who beat Djokovic on Friday. It will be their first meeting.

Saturday: three players who lost the first set and won

On Saturday the bottom half of the draw took the stage, and the same script was repeated three times in the first results of the day: the winner had lost the opening set.

Fifth seed Daniil Medvedev beat Jan-Lennard Struff 4-6, 6-4, 6-3. Medvedev had been disqualified in his Beijing semi-final earlier in the week after a ball he hit into the stands struck a spectator; this was his first match since. He now leads Struff by ten wins in twelve meetings. According to the ATP, his 31 hard-court wins in 2026 are the most on the tour. His next opponent will come from the match between Tomas Martin Etcheverry and Dalibor Svrcina.

Fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime got past Camilo Ugo Carabelli 4-6, 7-6(1), 7-5. The Argentine took the first set; Auger-Aliassime won the second in a tie-break and the decider in its closing games. The match lasted 2 hours and 58 minutes. In the third round he will play the winner of the match between Alejandro Tabilo and Pablo Carreno Busta.

Rafael Jodar, 20 and playing Shanghai for the first time, beat Thiago Agustin Tirante 4-6, 6-2, 6-3. The 12th seed saved all six break points he faced in the deciding set. His third-round opponent is Jiri Lehecka, who beat Nuno Borges 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

What the three matches have in common is that seeds start the tournament against opponents who already have a match behind them. That settling-in period can be counted as one reason the first sets went the other way; the fact that all three turned their matches around shows what shifts the balance over a longer contest.

The remaining results from Friday

The Friday second-round matches that did not make it into yesterday's piece also shaped the draw. Quentin Halys beat the seeded Alexander Blockx 4-6, 7-6, 6-4 and will be top seed Alexander Zverev's opponent in the third round. Karen Khachanov won a match against Arthur Fery in which all three sets went to a tie-break, 7-6, 6-7, 7-6. Arthur Gea knocked out 30th seed Ugo Humbert 6-4, 3-6, 6-1.

Frances Tiafoe (6-4, 6-4 against Yannick Hanfmann), Alexander Bublik (6-4, 7-6 against Tomas Machac), Brandon Nakashima (7-6, 7-5 against Matteo Berrettini), Jakub Mensik (6-3, 6-3 against Miomir Kecmanovic), Francisco Cerundolo (7-6, 6-3 against Roman Safiullin) and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (6-1, 6-3 against Jenson Brooksby) all advanced without dropping a set.

Tennis this week: what comes next and what to watch

In Beijing the day's second semi-final is Zheng against Mertens. The winner will face Andreeva in Sunday's final; we will cover the result in tomorrow's piece.

In Shanghai, play on the outside courts was suspended because of rain at around 3.50 pm local time on Saturday; the Tabilo–Carreno Busta and Etcheverry–Svrcina matches are among those affected. On the two courts with a retractable roof, Taylor Fritz against Matteo Arnaldi and Casper Ruud against Bu Yunchaokete were in progress as this piece was being prepared. In the night session second seed Carlos Alcaraz will play Juan Manuel Cerundolo; for Alcaraz, who won the title in Tokyo last week, it is his first match of the tournament. After that the defending champion, 17th seed Valentin Vacherot, takes the court against Sebastian Baez. The day's schedule also includes Arthur Fils against Pavel Kotov and Stefanos Tsitsipas against Luciano Darderi.

The third-round pairings already settled include Zverev against Halys, Shelton against Gea, De Minaur against Sakamoto, Hurkacz against Zhou and Jodar against Lehecka.

Three things are worth watching. First, the opening sets: three seeds started from behind on Saturday, and it remains to be seen whether the same pattern repeats in the remaining matches of the bottom half. Second, whether Zhou can keep the composure he showed in the tie-breaks against Hurkacz's serve. Third, whether the qualifier Rei Sakamoto can sustain the same level against De Minaur.

The women's tour moves on to Wuhan on Monday for another WTA 1000 event. The main draw will be played from 12 to 18 October on the outdoor hard courts of the Optics Valley International Tennis Center; qualifying takes place this weekend.

The same court in two kinds of light

In Shanghai play starts at midday and ends with the night session. The same hard court looks matt and even in daylight, darker and sharper under the floodlights; the lines stay where they are, and only the light changes.

The tennis-themed wall art and display cases of Aurecort, based in Kadıköy, Istanbul, start from that observation: the colour of the surface, the white of the line and the proportion between the two. The Framed Art Series brings together the tennis-themed pictures of the collection; the standard size is 50 × 70 cm. We described how colour and texture are balanced in a composition in our piece on colour, texture and composition in tennis wall art. For 3D-printed and hand-painted decorative objects, see the sister brand Aurecort 3D.

The tennis roundup is published on this blog every day. We explain how the pieces are prepared and how to follow them on the daily tennis roundup page.

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