2024 has already been a memorable year for Donna Vekic. She reached the Wimbledon semifinal and secured a silver medal at the Olympics, losing the gold medal match to Qinwen Zheng. This year is already the best of her career, regardless of how she performs at the Wuhan Open.

Elise Mertens is her opponent in the final match of the opening day in Wuhan.

The Belgian is a solid competitor, and Vekic could need to produce her best tennis to overcome the 2018 Australian Open semifinalist at the final WTA 1000 tournament of the year.

This is the first edition of the Wuhan Open in five years after the tournament was canceled from 2020 until 2023 because of stringent COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. However, the qualifying matches from this year’s iteration showed the courts remain as quick as they were in the past.

That should help Vekic in this matchup. She possesses a more powerful serve and groundstrokes than her opponent. The Croatian sometimes struggles with her footwork on fast courts against clean hitters, but Mertens is unlikely to get enough pace behind her shots to use that as a tactic. Instead, the Belgian will try to use her variety and consistency to extract unforced errors from Vekic.

Although Vekic will be confident of her best level being good enough to win if she finds it, Mertens has shown she is not intimidated by playing opponents who strike the ball harder than her. The 28-year-old kept her cool to defeat the huge-hitting Madison Keys at the US Open just over a month ago

Mertens has also beaten Naomi Osaka twice on hard courts this year, both in straight sets. She effectively used her slice, in particular, during those matches and could try to implement that tactic again during her battle with Vekic.

Despite Mertens being a very solid player, Vekic’s biggest obstacle may be internal. The Wimbledon semifinalist cannot realistically qualify for the year-end WTA Finals and has already achieved so much during a long and grueling season. Some players understandably drop their level during the final mandatory event of the year.

Observing Vekic’s body language will be interesting during the match. Surprisingly, she has never been to the quarterfinal of a WTA 1000 tournament, and changing that statistic might give her some motivation to try and have a good run in Wuhan.

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