The 2023 Roland Garros champion faces the 2023 Wimbledon champion on Monday in Cancun.
Three of the four women who won Majors this year will play their first matches of the 2023 WTA Finals on Monday. French Open champ Iga Swiatek faces Wimbledon champ Marketa Vondrousova, while US Open champ Coco Gauff takes on three-time Major runner-up Ons Jabeur.
Meanwhile in Paris, the last ATP Masters 1000 event of the season gets underway on Monday. And it’s a blockbuster field, featuring all of the world’s top 16 players. With the ATP Finals just two weeks ago, three spots remain open for that event. Plus, the year-end world No.1 ranking is still to be decided, with Novak Djokovic currently leading Carlos Alcaraz by 500 points. A full breakdown of the current rankings race can be found here.
Monday’s play in Bercy also features a meeting between Major champions, as Stan Wawrinka battles Dominic Thiem. Plus, Andy Murray faces a player he is 0-5 against, Alex de Minaur.
Each day, this preview will analyze the most intriguing matchup from both the WTA Finals and the ATP Paris Masters. Monday’s play in Paris begins at 11:00am local time in Paris, and at 2:30pm local time in Cancun.
Stan Wawrinka vs. Dominic Thiem (Q) – Not Before 8:30pm in Paris
This is a matchup between two Major champs with one-handed backhands who have struggled to regain their form after significant injury layoffs. Both men though did reach their first ATP final in some time this past summer on clay.
Wawrinka is 26-21 this year at tour level, yet comes into this tournament having lost six of his last eight matches on hard courts. On three occasions, Stan has reached the quarterfinals or better in Bercy, including just three years ago.
Thiem is only 17-22 this year at tour level, yet he won qualifying matches on both Saturday and Sunday to get into this draw. This is Dominic’s first appearance in Bercy since 2019, at an event where he is just 7-6 lifetime, but he was a semifinalist here five years ago.
Wawrinka leads their head-to-head 3-1, though they haven’t played in nearly seven years, well before the injury woes both have suffered more recently. Neither man has been in good form across the last few months, and this fast-playing surface in Paris does not allow either the time they prefer to set up their big strokes. But after gaining two confidence-building qualifying wins over the weekend against players ranked just outside the top 50, I give Thiem the slight edge on Monday.
Iga Swiatek (2) vs. Marketa Vondrousova (7) – Not Before 5:00pm in Cancun
It’s been another great season for Iga Swiatek. A year after going 67-9, she’s 63-11 in 2023. However, she trails Aryna Sabalenka by 630 points in the race for the year-end No.1 ranking, so she needs a very strong performance this week in Cancun if she wants to finish the season as the No.1 player for the second straight year. In 2022, she reached the semifinals of this event, while two years ago she failed to advance out of the round-robin stage.
This is the WTA Finals debut for Vondrousova, who is 40-14 in 2023. She reached just one final this year, but of course it was a big one: Wimbledon, where she claimed her first Major title. Marketa has only played one match since the US Open, while Iga is coming off a WTA 1000 title run just a few weeks ago in Beijing. Vondrousova is one of many players that has recently suffered an arm injury, and cited the changes to the tennis balls being used as the reason why.
Swiatek is 2-0 against Vondrousova, and won both of their meetings in straight sets. One of those contests took place this year on a hard court in Cincinnati, where Iga prevailed comfortably after claiming the first set in a tiebreak. On Monday, Swiatek is a considerable favorite to make it 3-0 against Vondrousova.
Other Notable Matches on Monday:
Andy Murray vs. Alex de Minaur (13) – Three of Murray’s five aforementioned losses to de Minaur have come this season, the latest taking place a month ago in Beijing, where the Australian came back from 2-5 down in the third to win, saving three match points. Andy won this event in 2016, but is 0-2 here since, and arrives in Paris having lost four of his last five matches.
Coco Gauff (3) vs. Ons Jabeur (6) – Gauff is 49-14 on the year, with four titles, three of which came during her excellent run this summer. But a year ago in her WTA Finals debut, she went 0-3 in round-robin competition, losing all three matches in straight sets. Jabeur is just 35-15 in a season where she battled multiple injuries, yet won two titles. She went 1-2 during last year’s WTA Finals, which was also her debut. Coco leads their head-to-head 3-2, and 1-0 on hard courts.
Monday’s full Order of Play for the WTA Finals is here, and for the ATP Paris Masters is here.