WTA Linz: Five Austrians start the qualification
With Barbara Haas, Sinja Kraus, Melanie Klaffner, Alina Michelitsch and Veronika Bokor, five local heroes are starting the qualification for the WTA Tour 250 tournament in Linz.
by p.m
last edit: Feb 04, 2023, 07:22 pm
Five ÖTV players want to take the chance to move into the main field of the Linz women's tennis classic. Luck in the draw: There is no internal Austrian duel in the first round!
Sinja Kraus opens the qualification at 10 a.m. on Center Court against Varvara Gracheva.
Upper Austrian Barbara Haas has the fourth game of the day on Center Court against Bulgarian Viktoriya Tomova. This is followed by the matches of Melanie Klaffner (against the Hungarian Dalma Galfi) and Veronika Bokor (against Kamilla Rakhimova). Alina Michalitsch , the finalist in the Young Ladies Wildcard Challenge, completed the second game on Match Court 1 against Clara Tauson from Denmark. Game starts on Sunday in the Design Center at 10 am! Admission is free on this day - it's the so-called "Family Day"!
Other attractive names in the qualifiers:
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova: The 31-year-old Linz winner from 2015 received a wildcard for the qualification from tournament director Sandra Reichel, her opponent at the start is Viktoria Kuzmova.
Sara Errani: The 35-year-old Italian played her first professional season in 2002, was ranked number five in the world, won 9 WTA tournaments in singles and 27 in doubles. With partner Roberta Vinci, Sara Errani triumphed in all Grand Slam tournaments.
Marketa Vondrousova: The 23-year-old Czech reached the final at the 2019 French Open and won the silver medal at the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. On July 16, 2022, she married her longtime boyfriend Štěpán Šimek, to whom she had been engaged since the Olympics. Since then, her civil name has been Markéta Šimková.
Anna-Lena Friedsam: The 29-year-old German was already in the final at Upper Austria Ladies Linz in 2015, which she lost to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.