After a one week break from WTA competitions caused by the BJK Cup qualifiers, the best women are back into singles action in Stuttgart, which hosts the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, clay tournament with a WTA 500 category. Despite being "just" WTA 500, the Stuttgart's field is stunningly strong, as 8 out of top 10 and 16 out of top 20 from WTA ranking compete in the small 28-players field this week. This results in multiple hit clashes between the absolute top class players from the start of first round.
Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Ons Jabeur and Caroline Garcia are gifted with byes in opening round as top four seeds of the tournament. They can meet very dangerous player in their first on-court appearance during second rough though. Swiatek will play against the winner of match between Qinwen Zheng and Alycia Parks. It can be interesting match-up, but Sabalenka and Jabeur will need to challenge the winners of hit clashes from first round. The current Australian Open champion will play against the winner of match between Barbora Krejcikova and Liudmila Samsonova. Previous matches between Sabalenka and Krejcikova played in 2023 were thrilling battle, but the Czech needs to prevail against the world's number 15 in super tough first round clash. Ons Jabeur waits for the winner from the Grand Slam champions match-up - Jelena Ostapenko vs Emma Raducanu.
Apart from Swiatek, the first quarter of main draw delivers first round clashes Ekaterina Alexandrova vs Donna Vekic and Karolina Pliskova vs Maria Sakkari. Second quarter is also super quality, as Elena Rybakina is third Grand Slam champion there in addition to Raducanu and Ostapenko. Martina Trevisan vs Beatriz Haddad Maia is also a match to watch in this draw's section.
Third quarter looks quite less impressive, but brings another top hit of first round. Cori Gauff will have a very tough task to overcome after travelling to Europe from Delray Beach, where she took part in succesful campaign of US team, who qualified into the final play-offs of BJK Cup. The American will start from the match against world's number 13 - Veronika Kudermetova. Last section of main draw is also stacked and apart from the presence of Sabalenka and Krejcikova, it delivers another exciting first round's match between Daria Kasatkina and Paula Badosa. The Russian relived in one of her favorite tournaments in Charleston, running into semifinals after very poor start of this year on hard-courts. Badosa also looks like coming back to form, as she reached out the quarterfinals in South Carolina.
