All the spotlight in Bad Homburg was reflected on the appearance of Iga Swiatek. The world's number one has scheduled this event as the only one, which will help her in the preparations into Wimbledon Championships. Swiatek was practicing in Germany for a few days and the hosts have announced in prior, that all the fans who want to watch the inaugural match of the world's ranking leader, can expect it to take place on Monday. This was not a great news for the player, who got paired up against Swiatek in the opening round.
Tatjana Maria was competing in WTA 125 challenger in Gaiba till Sunday, approaching the final, where she got defeated by Ashlyn Krueger in three sets. The German has need to move into Bad Homburg on Monday morning and approached the venue straight after the journey. Despite those obstacles, the last year's Wimbledon semifinalist has not give up the opportunity to play against the world's number one on the home soil. Maria has not disappointed the home fans, as she took up a good fight against Swiatek in first set. Despite being a break down from the start, the German has made up the gap and broke Swiatek in 12th game to move up into set lead.
Swiatek has adapted into conditions since then and reduced the amount of errors, showing some great skills and starting to feel the grass well, playing some quality strikes. Maria has dropped the level since winning the first set, seemingly looking more tired out and especially serving much worse than before. This has resulted with a one-way traffic performance since the start of second set with Swiatek taking it all with the score 5-7 6-2 6-0 after less than 2 hours. The Pole will play against Jil Teichmann in second round. The Swiss has won the first round's match against Claire Liu by 3-6 6-3 6-4.
Late withdrawals
The WTA schedule is quite tight in the recent days, as it's the last week before the Wimbledon Championships, which starts next Monday. Some players were competing in the decisive stages of the tournaments in last week, which resulted in withdrawals for some players, who did not get too much time to commute and rest before the next stop. The case is even more difficult with the fact, that the hosts of event in Bad Homburg wanted to end up the first round on Monday. Donna Vekic was supposed to play there as the 3rd seed and was scheduled to play an interesting match against Emma Navarro. Vekic approached the final in WTA 500 bett1open in Berlin and withdrew from the Bad Homburg event, having a neccesity to play the first round match on the next day. Alycia Parks was paired up against Leylah Fernandez in the opening match, but the American was playin in the final of doubles competition in Birmingham and has also decided to pull out from the tournament in Germany.
Both the opponents of Vekic and Parks have played against lucky losers from qualifying, which was beneficial for them, as Navarro has easily defeated Nadia Podorska with a score 6-2 6-0 and Leylah Fernandez gave away just one game to Lena Papadakis, winning against the German by 6-0 6-1.
Good opening for the seeds
All the seeded players, who appeared on the courts in Bad Homburg have done well in general. The 2nd seed Liudmila Samsonova has scored a comfortable 6-1 6-4 win over Viktoriya Tomova. Varvara Gracheva has played the first professional match as a French after changing the nationality. The new French number two in WTA rankings has performed an easy win over Jaqueline Cristian with a score 6-2 6-1.
Mayar Sherif is seeded with number 4 in Bad Homburg and will be also a seeded player in Wimbledon Championships after gaining a great ranking boost by winning two consecutive WTA 125 challengers in Makarska and Valencia. Interestingly, the new world's number 31 has played just two matches on grass before during her career, in the qualies for Wimbledon in 2021. The match against Anna Lena Friedsam was just a third grass appearance for the Egyptian, who specialized herself in playing on clay. Sherif has showed up really well though, coming back from being a set down and moving into second round after an exciting three-setter with a score 4-6 6-4 7-5.
Bianca Andreescu has won just one match during her two grass tournaments apperances earlier in June. The Canadian has added another one in a match against the wild card receiver, Sonay Kartal. It was a really tough match for the 5th seed, which was played on the distance of 3 sets. Andreescu was leading in the decider with a break, but the current world's number 264 was a challenging opponent till the end. While the match was approaching the decisive tiebreak, Andreescu managed to break the serve of her lower ranked opponent in 12th game and moved into second round after 2,5 hours of battle with a score 6-2 3-6 7-5.
