World No.1 Iga Swiatek has pulled out of the upcoming China Open citing ‘personal matters’ as the reason.

It’s been a mixed season for Swiatek, who has experienced several highs, including her French Open victory earlier this year, as well as taking a bronze medal at the Olympics, also held at Roland-Garros, later that same summer.

However, the Polish star failed to finish the Grand Slam programme the way she’d have wanted to, having been knocked out in the quarter-final of the US Open.

That followed disappointing third-round exits in the Australian Open back in January and July’s Wimbledon Championship.

But with only a handful of tournaments left before the season-ending WTA Finals, Swiatek is set to miss the China Open, which gets underway midway through next week.

Confirming her exit via a WTA social media post, the statement read: “Due to personal matters, I’m forced to withdraw from the @ChinaOpen in Beijing. I’m very sorry as I had an amazing time playing and winning this tournament last year and was really looking forward to being back there.

“I know that the fans will experience great tennis there and I’m sorry I won’t be a part of it this time.”

Swiatek took the title in Beijing last year, but her absence from the event this time around comes after a string of complaints about tennis players’ workloads.

Speaking ahead of the US Open, Swiatek commented: “Well, it would be easy to fix it for people that are in charge, but they already made plenty of decisions and they promised so many things to tournaments, WTA, for example, that, you know, it would mean for them to change their mind, which is tricky, because it’s business.

She continued: “But I think players are aware that this is crazy what’s going on, and the schedule is really tough. I know that, I mean, I spoke about it in Cincinnati, for example, and there are people saying that, oh, I don’t have to play so many tournaments.

“But truth, like the fact is that we have so many mandatory tournaments that we literally need to, you know, show up and we don’t have time to, like, work on stuff or, like believe peacefully, because from one tournament we’re going straight to another.”

It remains to be seen whether Swiatek will return for the Wuhan Open, which starts in the first week of October.