Chennai, November 5: Linette and Uchijima Meet Again in Round Two

The second round in Chennai arrives with the humidity still hanging over the courts and the balls fluffing up quickly, which Vaishnavi Adkar has already said changes how she serves and builds rallies. It is a day about recovery. Magda Linette and Simona Waltert both crawled out of long opening matches, while Moyuka Uchijima and Lucrezia Stefanini were done quickly and have had time to rest.

There is also a home story worth following: Adkar, fresh from her first tour-level main-draw win, faces Anastasia Zakharova with a quarterfinal at stake. Here is how the day lines up:

• 09:30 — Uchijima — Linette
• 09:30 — Hontama — Kulambayeva
• 11:00 — Waltert — Stefanini
• 12:30 — Zakharova — Adkar

Times are UTC.

Uchijima — Linette

This rivalry began on this very ground. Uchijima's tour main-draw debut came in Chennai in 2022, and Linette took her apart 6-4 6-0. The next two meetings were far more even. Linette won a three-setter in the second round in Beijing in 2024, and Uchijima levelled things a little with a 7-6(8) decider in the first round of the 2025 Australian Open. Linette leads 2-1, and all three meetings were on hard courts.

Their openers here could hardly have been more different. Uchijima beat Rebecca Sramkova 6-3 6-2 in a hurry. Linette needed a tie-break, lost the second set 5-7 to Aliona Falei and only pulled away in the decider. The Polish broadcaster CANAL+ SPORT summed it up as "Plenty of nerves, but a win in the end!" (Kanał Sportowy), and that sounds about right to me. It was survival, and it cost her a lot physically.

Linette's autumn has wobbled like a fan on a hot afternoon. She ended a losing run in Osaka, beat Zakharova, then lost to Lilli Tagger 2-6 2-6 in Guangzhou. She does like this tournament, though: a 5-1 record here and a past final count for something. Uchijima's warning sign is a different one. Her October retirement against Magdalena Frech in Wuhan qualifying was recorded as illness. Her quick win this week is encouraging, but it does not prove she is fully well.

To my eye, it comes down to whether Linette can set up orderly patterns early, before the match turns into another war of attrition that her legs may not want. The market makes her a modest favourite. Uchijima's fresher legs make me less sure of that than the price suggests.

Hontama — Kulambayeva

Zhibek Kulambayeva has turned Chennai into a little home of her own. She came through qualifying, beat Mei Yamaguchi there 3-6 6-3 7-6(4), and then beat her again 6-4 7-5 when Yamaguchi returned as a lucky loser. Beating the same opponent twice in three days shows she adjusts. The rematch was not tidy, though. She missed her first chance to close the opening set, and the second set swung back and forth on dropped service games.

She is also still playing doubles, so there has been no truly quiet day in her week. Most of her tennis in recent seasons has been on clay, and she arrives ranked far below Mai Hontama. Hontama's own run had been patchy, including a 4-6 0-6 loss to Emerson Jones. Here, though, she got past Mananchaya Sawangkaew in a tight first-set tie-break and then ran away with the second 6-2. Her ability to pull away once she is in front is exactly what Kulambayeva has struggled with this week.

Waltert — Stefanini

Simona Waltert came to Chennai carrying a losing run. That included a painful 7-5 4-6 0-6 collapse against Himeno Sakatsume, followed by losses to Anhelina Kalinina and Jil Teichmann. She ended the run against Sahaja Yamalapalli, but not easily. After taking the first set, she lost the second and had to rebuild in the decider before winning 6-3. That shows persistence, but she is not yet back to her best, and her hard-court record this season sits well below her clay numbers.

Lucrezia Stefanini had a calmer start, beating teenage lucky loser Rada Zolotareva 6-2 6-2. Her hard-court season has been her strongest. Italian coverage before the event framed Chennai as a chance to improve her standing for Australian Open main-draw entry. She did have a painful arm haematoma after an anti-doping blood test in September. Nothing in the Chennai reporting suggests it still bothers her, and I treat it as history.

Zakharova — Adkar

Adkar's win over Jodie Burrage was a genuine escape. She started nervously and lost the first set. She then let a promising position in the decider slip as Burrage's forehand took over, and still clawed back to win 7-5 with Burrage serving for the match. Afterwards she explained the commitment she had talked through with her coaches: "I just want to be able to say that I am the biggest warrior out there" (Indian Tennis Daily).

What I liked most was a new kind of patience. She is a player who says, "I love being aggressive on court" (WTA). Yet against Burrage she made her opponent play the extra ball instead of going for broke every time. She also admitted that she tired, that her rally tolerance dropped and her groundstrokes landed shorter. That is exactly when Burrage took control.

Zakharova offers a cooler kind of test. Against Polina Iatcenko she had to work through a 7-6(3) first set, then dropped just one game in the second. Once she gets in front, she tends to stay in front. For Adkar, there is history at stake: if she wins, two Indian women would reach the quarterfinals of the same tour event for the first time in the Open Era.

Tired Legs, Fresh Legs and Adkar's Home Run

The question running through the whole day is how much a long first-round match takes out of a player. Linette and Waltert both need their legs to recover overnight, while Uchijima and Stefanini have had the luxury of rest. The match I would least want to miss is Adkar's, because a player discovering she can compete at this level is rarely dull to watch.

These are my own readings, and the humidity has a way of making fools of tidy expectations.