With a line-up featuring so many of my favourite female players, I was admittedly rather excited by this year’s Toray Pan Pacific Open (TPPO) tennis tournament at Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo. I was always going to attend the second qualifying day and the first two days of the real competition that followed. Impressed by the initial line up I decided to add the fifth day which would be the quarter finals and a chance to see the best eight in action.

With four days of tennis on the horizon I was guaranteed to see the likes of Qinwen Zheng (China), Naomi Osaka (Japan), Emma Raducanu (GB) and Jasmine Paolini (Italy) ….. unless one or two of them got injured! First of all, 2024 championZheng pulled out with an injury about a week before it began and Raducanu soon followed suit. I thought I was still going to be able see Osaka and Paolini so all was not lost but unbelievably they withdrew on the eve of the first day, so I was bitterly disappointed!

The 40th anniversary tournament was also hit by top players like Jessica Pegula and Emma Navarro also withdrawing from the competition. This really is nothing too new as the same happens year after year as the Asian swing is often decimated by players ending their season early once the fourth and final grand slam of the season has taken part in New York.

The beauty of the qualifying weekend (Oct 18-19) was that you could (legitimately!) sit anywhere you want which gave me a rare chance to see the action up real close. However, it also means there are some people there who wouldn’t usually be at the tennis if it wasn’t free. Nothing wrong with that as that’s how the game is grown and expanded in Japan but people really do take the p*ss by putting their stuff down on seats and then disappearing for most of the day!

The unpredictable seasonal weather was something of a downside. The Sunday qualifying day began in hot sunshine with the roof open but the sun gradually made way for spots of rain and had to be closed. In these days of hi-tech drying devices, it was just a load of towels which were used to take the moisture off the court during Katie Boulter’s match.

The ticketing this year reverted back to the all-day ticket style of old after a few years of separate sessions that required two tickets per day.

Sadly, I don’t think it was too effective in improving the crowd numbers which seemed as sparse as usual throughout the tournament.

Finding a spare seat certainly wasn’t a problem!

The “Center Coat” sign was back on display for the qualifying and opening days of action but after posting about it on social media it was finally changed to the correct spelling on Day 2 not that I believe I was the one responsible for that!

I may be part of the furniture at the TPPO but I sadly don’t have the power to force change! Another regular fixture of any tournament in Tokyo is the Bjorn Borg of Japan who is known as Vamos Watanabe on Instagram.

Detailing the matches I saw is unlikely to be of interest to anyone, so I’ll just list the players I saw in order of their current ranking:

Elena Rybakina (Kazakhstan, #6), Ekaterina Alexandrova (#10), Victoria Mboko (Canada, #21), Leylah Fernandez (Canada, #23), Sofia Kenin (USA, #28), McCartney Kessler (#31), Eva Lys (Germany, #44), Maria Sakkari (Greece, #52), Vicktorija Golubic (Switzerland, #53), Christina Bucsa (Spain, #68), Katie Boulter (GBR, #79), Moyuka Uchijima (Japan, #92), Kimberly Birrell (Australia, #117), Moyuka Uchijima (Japan, #92), Bianca Andreescu (Canada, #227).

The best match for me had to be Katie Boulter’s epic qualifying day win.

Sofia Kenin’s three-set tie-break victory over Ekaterina Alexandrova in the quarter finals deserves credit too. I was excited to see Canadian Open 2025 winner Victoria Mboko twice on the main court (more on her later) and her fellow compatriot Leylah Fernandez was another I wanted to watch. She’s probably best remembered in the UK as the one who lost to Emma Raducanu in the 2021 US Open Final. She may not have a Grand Slam title to her name, but she has been the better and more consistent performer since then and has risen through the ranks.

For my early years in attendance at the TPPO I did not once even think about going to watch the action on the show court just across from the main arena. That changed a couple of years ago when I went to see Britain’s Harriet Dart on it and I enjoyed being very close to the action that I have since divided my time between the two courts. Going back and forth was something I did a lot this time.

The first person I saw on the show court this tournament was China’s Xinyu Wang who I have been a fan of for a few years now. She’d already won the first set by the time I joined the action but sadly her game went downhill after that and she lost. She refused to shake hands with the umpire at the end which I wasn’t too impressed with, but I can forgive that as it is an emotional sport.

At the end of her match I appeared on TV giving a one-man standing ovation to her opponent Varvara Gracheva. The camera lingered on me a bit too long but I really wasn’t as sad as I looked!

Russian Diana Shnaider has burst onto the scene in recent years and is noticeable for wearing a bandana on court. I saw her romp to victory but when I saw her outside the court post-match I was too shy to ask for a picture. I did say “Good win Diana” as she passed me by deep in conversation with her coaches though and she did say thank you so I was happy with that!

One of the lighter moments was seeing doubles specialist Shoko Aoyama reading a book during the breaks between the games. She surely can’t have read too much though given the limited rest every two games.

Doubles was something I watched more than usual this time and it was interesting to see the difference between the specialists and those who have made their name in the singles format.

One of the highlights on this court for me was seeing Canadian stars Victoria Mboko and Bianca Andreescu pair up for the doubles. They seemed like they were having great fun playing together having faced off against each other just a few hours earlier.

Playing tennis is such a mentally challenging sport, and just watching it is also full of highs and lows. There’s far more to the TPPO than just the tennis though such as the Q&A and signing sessions, the food trucks, free tennis ball giveaways, the pickle-ball practice courts and the accessibility of some of the players post-match. The latter really was a highlight for me and I’ll be sure to look out for all of their results a lot more in the future.

The tournament was eventually won by Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic who was about the only player I never saw during my days in attendance! I may have not seen the champion in action or the likes of Osaka and Raducanu but I did make a new tennis friend (there’s not many people I can talk to about the sport!) and it was probably my favourite ever TPPO so it just goes to show that big name players don’t completely make or break a tournament!

Click here to read ‘Meeting Tennis Stars Aplenty at This Year’s Japan Open’

Click here to read ‘From Qualification To The 1st Round & Beyond? Following The Fortunes of My Favourite British & German Tennis Players In Tokyo!’

Click here to read ‘I Met Britain’s No. 1 Female Tennis Player In Tokyo (& I Was On The TV Coverage A Fair Bit Too!)’

Click here to read ‘A Double Dose of Tennis: Alcaraz In Tokyo, Big Balls, A Brit Appearance, Japan’s Rising Star, German Efficiency & Bjorn Borg!’