WTA Guadalajara: Tournament Preview and Picks
by Bradley Gibbs | by Tyler Doty
Key tournament details
One of the newer competitions, the Guadalajara Open Akron presented by Santander is a WTA 500 level tournament, so it’s no joke. This is a very decent event, one that has been won by some serious competitors, such as current world number three Jessica Pegula, since its inception back in 2022.
The WTA Guadalajara event will begin on Monday, September 8th, and will run for one week, with the final due to commence on Sunday, September 14th. The action will take place on outdoor hard courts at Centro Panamericano de Tenis, which is located in Zapopan, Mexico.
Following qualification, the main draw contains just 28 players, four of which go straight into the second round. The top eight players are seeded. To get her hands on the tournament trophy, a player will need to win five matches, or four if she happens to be one of the first four seeds.
Defending champion back for more
Often in these types of small-draw events, we don’t always see the defending champion taking part, but that’s not the case here. In Zapopan this week, 2024 winner Magdalena Frech is back and she’ll be hoping to defend her crowd.
A year ago, the Polish competitor took part in just her second top-tier final, beating Olivia Gadecki in straight sets to secure her first ever WTA Tour title. Since then, it’s been a bit of a rocky road for the woman who currently stands as the world number 30, while it’s fair to say that she arrives in Mexico off the back of some poor hard-court form.
The 27-year-old did win a couple of matches at the US Open recently, but she was brushed aside by Coco Gauff in the third round, offering almost zero resistance, while it’s not as if she’s always handled easier tasks with aplomb since the end of the grass-court season. The one-time WTA Tour winner went out in the first round in both Montreal and Cincinnati, while she only won two matches in Washington, meaning that since the switch to hard courts in early July, the Pole has won only four out of eight matches. Hardly the form of someone ready to successfully defend her crown.
It’s also not as if the opposition in Mexico will be lacking. For starters, there are higher-ranked players involved, including Elise Mertens, Veronika Kudermetova and Jelena Ostapenko, while there’s also a player like Maria Sakkari, who has reached two of the previous three finals of this event, to worry about.
Before we go any further, here’s a quick look at the previous champions and finalists of this event:
- 2024 - Magdalena Frech defeated Olivia Gadecki
- 2023 - Maria Sakkari defeated Caroline Dolehide
- 2022 - Jessica Pegula defeated Maria Sakkari
Parks to pick up the pace this week
For pre-tournament bettors, there are potentially a few roads to go down. Maria Sakkari clearly likes playing in Zapopan, reaching the final in 2022, before going one better and winning the event in 2023, while in a tournament of this nature, where there’s a lack of top-20 talent present, players like Veronika Kudermetova and Elise Mertens must be given maximum respect.
However, I like the look of Alycia Parks, who has clearly improved during the last year, and who definitely plays her best tennis on this surface. Parks’ only previous WTA Tour title was won on a hard court in Lyon, France, while four of her five WTA Challenger titles were also secured on hard surfaces.
Following a WTA Challenger success in France late last year, Parks kicked on at the start of this season by reaching the semi-finals of a hard-court event in Auckland, New Zealand, where she defeated the likes of recent Grand Slam finalist Amanda Anisimova, before going on to play some excellent hard-court tennis at events in both Doha and Dubai, where she beat the likes of Wang Xin (ranked 35th) and Diana Shnaider (ranked 19th).
In more recent times, we’ve seen Parks play very well in this part of the world, winning her first three matches at the event in Monterrey, Mexico as recently as last month, which bodes very well ahead of this tournament. In Monterrey, she beat Emma Navarro (ranked 18th) and Rebecca Sramkova (ranked 38th), showing the sort of form that tells me she can be a serious competitor at this event.
Our WTA Guadalajara Pick: Alycia Parks to win the title.
