Samsonova vs Tjen — the rankings say one thing, the form says another
Preview · National Bank Open, Toronto (WTA 1000) · First round · 3 August 2026
This is the pick of the day’s less heralded first-round matches, and one where ranking logic breaks down completely. Janice Tjen is the better-ranked player by more than thirty places. Liudmila Samsonova is the one who spent the past fortnight beating people ranked above both of them. Something gives on a Toronto Monday crammed with catch-up tennis.
The matchup
Samsonova, 27, is a former world No. 12 with five tour titles, one of them in Washington — which makes her recent form there feel like a homecoming as much as a hot streak. Her game is unambiguous: enormous first serve, flat and heavy off both wings, very little interest in the long exchange. When it clicks, few players here are more uncomfortable to face on a hard court. When it does not, errors come in floods.
Tjen, 24, is the most compelling story in Indonesian tennis in a generation — the first woman from her country to win a Grand Slam match in over two decades, a tour champion in Chennai, and a top-40 player since February. She is a clean, quick, low-fuss striker who takes the ball early and defends better than her build suggests.
Form & conditions
The gap between their years is stark. Tjen’s ranking is a monument to 2025 rather than a description of 2026; she has lost far more than she has won and cannot string weeks together. There have still been flashes — a first-round win over Leylah Fernandez at Wimbledon, and a fine showing in Washington last week where she took the opening set off Anna Kalinskaya before losing a final-set tie-break.
Samsonova’s season was interrupted by the illness outbreak that swept through Madrid in the spring, which flattened her for days and cost her clay-court momentum; her ranking slid into the seventies as a result. But in Washington she opened by beating sixth seed Madison Keys from a set down and reached the quarter-finals before running into Diana Shnaider. That is the most convincing week either woman has had in months.
They also met in February, on hard courts in Abu Dhabi, where Samsonova won comfortably in straight sets.
The deciding factor
Serve, and what it buys. Samsonova’s is the biggest weapon on the court and the thing that lets her play first-strike tennis without grinding. Tjen’s route in is to neutralise it — chip returns deep, extend rallies past four shots, force Samsonova to keep finding corners. She is quick enough to do that, but she must hold her own serve under sustained pressure to make it count, and that is where her dip has shown most.
The call
Samsonova, with medium confidence. The head-to-head is recent and one-sided, she is the more confident of the two after Washington, and her weapons travel well to Toronto. Tjen has the movement to make it awkward and the temperament to hang around, but she needs Samsonova’s serve to misfire. The reward for the winner is 22nd seed Barbora Krejčíková.
