Nothing like it since 1984
Three wild cards. Three wins. Three South Koreans still standing at the Korea Open.
Park Sohyun and Ku Yeonwoo both won their first-ever WTA main-draw matches on Tuesday, joining Back Dayeon in the second round. To find three Korean women in a WTA second round in the Open Era, you need to go back to Rio de Janeiro in 1984, when Han Eun-Sook made the quarter-finals and Helen Park and Lee Jeong-Soon reached round two, all as qualifiers.
Seoul has been on the WTA calendar since 2004. Before this week, it had never seen more than two home players get past the first round (2013 and 2023).
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A ‘s-Hertogenbosch champion goes down
Park delivered the biggest upset. The 24-year-old, ranked 329th, beat Robin Montgomery, who won ‘s-Hertogenbosch this season, 7-6(4), 6-3. Ku, 23, followed with a comfortable 6-3, 6-2 win over Alevtina Ibragimova.
Back had got the ball rolling on Monday, taking out Yuan Yue 6-3, 4-6, 6-1. She has done this before at this event: back in 2023, ranked 569th, she sent top seed Jelena Ostapenko home in the same round.
On paper, Ku is the strongest of the trio. She sits at No. 185 after peaking at 171 in July, and she went through qualifying at all four majors this year. Back has climbed to 272nd on the back of a 17-match winning streak in the spring.
Three seeds in the way
Now it gets tough. Park faces third seed Lanlana Tararudee, Back meets fifth seed Maya Joint, and Ku takes on fourth seed Elena-Gabriela Ruse.
Two wins from those three would make history. No pair of South Korean women has ever reached the quarter-finals of the same WTA event in the Open Era. The last Korean to reach a WTA quarter-final at all? Jang Su-Jeong, right here in Seoul, in 2013.
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