Day one of the Korea Open in Seoul gets underway with seven main draw matches on the card. The highlight of the opening session is a Russian showdown between Kamilla Rakhimova and Polina Kudermetova, but there is plenty of interest before we get there.
These two have never crossed paths before, so there is no head to head record to lean on. What we do have is a decent read of where both players are right now, and it is not a flattering picture for Uchijima. She was comfortably sitting inside the top 50 a year ago, but her ranking has yo-yoed around the top 100 mark in recent months and consistency has clearly been a problem for her.
Tararudee, on the other hand, has pushed her ranking up to a career high of 61 and is genuinely playing some of the best tennis of her career. Her hard court numbers this season have been impressive, with 40 wins on the surface telling their own story. She tends to keep things tidy from the baseline and I expect that reliability to be the difference here.
Another first meeting between two players at very different stages of their current seasons. Yao has done well to come through qualifying and reach the main draw, but stepping up against a ranked tour player is a different challenge entirely. Joint reached the Seoul semifinals at this exact tournament last year, so she knows the conditions and knows how to perform here.
It has been a difficult 2026 for the young Australian, with only 12 wins across the whole season and her top 100 spot now looking vulnerable. That said, her recent performances have shown some encouraging signs even when the results have not gone her way. A home run in Seoul would do her world of good and I think she has enough quality to see off an opponent who is still finding her feet at this level.
Rakhimova leads their only previous meeting, so she already has the psychological edge going in. Both players are making their first appearances since the US Open, but the New York experience was far more rewarding for Rakhimova. She produced a genuinely eye catching run in Flushing Meadows, knocking out Barbora Krejcikova along the way before exiting in the third round. That kind of scalp does not happen by accident and she looks sharp on hard courts right now.
Kudermetova has been putting in the work on the ITF circuit and has shown some good form at that level, but converting that into wins against established tour players is a different matter entirely. Rakhimova is coming off the strongest hard court stretch of her season and I cannot see Kudermetova having the firepower to trouble her significantly.
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