10 Things: St Petersburg & Taiwan
Five Top 20 players are in action this week in two WTA events that are being staged for the first time.
Here’s 10 Things To Know about St. Petersburg and Kaohsiung!
1) St. Petersburg has four Top 20 players in the draw.
No.11 Belinda Bencic, No.16 Roberta Vinci, No.18 Caroline Wozniacki and No.20 Ana Ivanovic are all in action this week at the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy.
2) This is the first edition of St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy as a WTA Premier event.
The event was previously held six times as an ITF tournament (from 2003-2008 and in 2015) and this year marks the first time in 25 years that WTA tennis returns to St Petersburg, Russia.
3) Bencic leads the pack in Russia…
For the first time in her career, Belinda Bencic is the No.1 seed at a WTA tournament at St. Petersburg. Her previous highest seeding was No.3 in Washington DC last year.
4) … While another 18-year-old is hoping to make big moves.
Daria Kasatkina is one to watch in St. Petersburg: She’s the second youngest player in the main draw and is coming off her joint-best result at a Grand Slam after reaching the 3rd round at the Australian Open, where she knocked out No.29 Anna Karolina Schmiedlova for the biggest win of her career.
5) Bencic and Wozniacki could face each other in the semifinals.
No.3 seed Caroline Wozniacki, who took a late wildcard into St. Petersburg, is on a semifinal collision course with Bencic, who beat her four times in 2015. See how the draw breaks down here.
6) A former World No.1 headlines in Kaohsiung.
And with 48 WTA titles to her name, No.1-seeded Venus Williams has more titles than the entire Taiwan main draw put together!
7) The Taiwan Open in Kaohsiung is the first WTA event in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s first taste of WTA tennis came back in 2012, with Taipei hosting a WTA 125K Series event from 2012 to 2015.
8) Elizaveta Kulichkova is one to watch.
Kulichkova enters the Taiwan Open following a string of career bests: at the Australian Open she reached the 3rd round of a Grand Slam for the first time and scored her career best win over No.25 Andrea Petkovic.
9) The Taiwan Open is one out of a record nine WTA Premier and International tournaments hosted on the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan…
The other eight are the China Open in Beijing, Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open, Guangzhou International Women’s Open, Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open, Jiangxi Women’s Tennis Open in Nanchang, Shenzhen Open, Tianjin Open and WTA Elite Trophy Zhuhai.
10) Check out all the best live action this week on WTA Live powered by TennisTV.
And learn how you can follow it all right here.