Career
2001
Yuan began competing on the ITF circuit at age fifteen in May 2001, but that year lost in the first round of qualifying in all four events she entered, and ended the year still unranked.
2002
In 2002, she won seven matches in qualifying and one in a main draw, and finished the year ranked 984th.
2003
In 2003, she won eleven matches in qualifying and five in main draws, and after reaching the final qualifying round for a $50,000 event at Shenzhen she finished the year world-ranked nearly 300 places higher, at 689th.
2004
In March 2004, she reached the final of a $10,000 grass-court event at Yarrawonga, Australia, only to default to her last opponent. In early June, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she reached the semi-final of a $25,000 event at Wulanhaote, before losing to more experienced countrywoman Liu Nan-Nan. In December, she reached her first $25,000 tournament final at Port Pirie, before losing a tight three-set championship decider to a little-known Australian. Overall, she had won thirty-two matches in the year, lifting her world ranking to 387, up another 300 places year-on-year.
2005
Yuan's consistent upward progress through the rankings continued in 2005. In February, she reached the semi-final of a $50,000 hard-court tournament at Bendigo, Australia. In March, she finally won her first career ITF singles title at the $10,000 grass-court event in Benalla, also in Australia. She performed solidly in several successive $25,000 tournaments over the Spring, reaching the semi-final at Campobasso, Italy in May with an impressive win over emerging star Jarmila Gajdosova , and defeating Gajdosova in three once more, as well as the equally promising youngster Kaia Kanepi of Estonia, and the experienced Australian Christina Wheeler, in reaching the final at Grado in June. In August, she nearly qualified for the $50,000 Bronx tournament after a fine three-set victory over Tatiana Poutchek, but lost in the deciding set in an extremely close qualifying-round match against Angelika Bachmann.
In September, Yuan won her second career singles title and first $50,000 title at Beijing, defeating the highly competent Top-150 player Vilmarie Castellvi 4–6 6–4 6–4 in the final. Then she finally qualified for her first event at Guangzhou, but lost in the first round to Arantxa Parra-Santonja of Spain. In October, as a direct entrant to the WTA tournament at Bangkok, she impressed in defeating Aiko Nakamura and Sania Mirza , to win her first ever main-draw matches at a WTA event in reaching the quarter-final, where she took Gisela Dulko to three sets. Two further semi-final performances at $25,000 ITF contests rounded off the Chinese teenager's best year to date, which saw her ascend another 234 places in the world rankings to 153rd, well within contention for qualifying for more WTA tournaments in the new year.
2006
2006 began well with the much-improved Chinese rising star qualifying for with wins over Cara Black, Kaia Kanepi and Casey Dellacqua. But Top 20 player Francesca Schiavone was a challenge too far in the main draw first round, defeating Yuan for the loss of just five games. Not one for being easily discouraged, she proceeded to come through qualifying for her fourth WTA Tour main draw and her first at level, the , with straight-sets wins over Yulia Beygelzimer of Ukraine, Elena Baltacha of Great Britain and Bethanie Mattek of the United States. In the main draw, she defeated Melinda Czink 6–4 6–2, then faced the World No. 2 Kim Clijsters, and took six games from her; but the result in the Belgian's favour was virtually a foregone conclusion. Still, these performances had lifted her dramatically to 108th in the world in just one month.
After a couple of disappointing qualifying losses in early February, to Vania King at Tokyo and Akgul Amanmuradova at Pattaya, Yuan next broke through in , defeating Christina Wheeler once more to gain the main draw, where she battled past talented Uzbekistan player Varvara Lepchenko in three sets before succumbing to the solid Jill Craybas in Round Two. This performance was enough to restore her to a level-best World No. 108 as February came to a close.
Then at Indian Wells in March, she came through qualifying with impressive wins over Angela Haynes and Varvara Lepchenko, then advanced to Round Three of the main draw with straight-sets wins over Akiko Morigami and Catalina Castano. Even if she does not win her third-round tie, the estimated 39 ranking points accrued from her performance so far will give her a very strong chance of edging just inside the World Top 100 for the first time in her career in the week following the tournament.
2007
Yuan won her first 2007 main draw match at Indian Wells, where she qualified and beat Frenchwoman Virginie Razzano in 3 sets. She then lost in two tight sets to Japanese veteran Ai Sugiyama. Two weeks later, she won a 25K ITF tournament in Hammond, Louisiana.
While Yuan struggled during the clay and grass season, she won a few main draw matches in the hardcourt season. She defeated Casey Dellacqua of Australia in Cincinnati, eighth-seeded Russian Yaroslava Shvedova in Bali, Marina Erakovic of New Zealand in Seoul, and fourth-seeded Japanese Ai Sugiyama in Tokyo. This win over 37th-ranked Sugiyama was Yuan's best win of the season.
2008
In July, Yuan won three matches to reach the quarterfinals of the East West Bank Classic in , California where she lost to wildcard Bethanie Mattek of the USA, 6–2, 7–5. As a result, her world singles ranking jumped 24 places, from number 122 to 98. Later that month, as a qualifier at the Rogers Cup in Montreal, she had to quit in the first round against ninth seed Patty Schnyder because of a left thigh injury, 7–6 , 3–2 .
In August, Yuan was the number one seed in the women's singles qualifying tournament, but she lost in the qualifying first round to unseeded Hana Sromova of the Czech Republic, 6–3, 6–2.
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