The grass season goes ahead with second week of WTA level events on the green surface. The WTA 250 action stays in UK, with the Rothesay Classic event being played in Birmingham.
Two top 20 players approaches Birmingham to top the field of main draw - the world's number 12 Barbora Krejcikova and the 17th Jelena Ostapenko. Krejcikova has a formidable part of the draw for the start, as she plays the opening matches against the qualifier, and will face another player from the qualies field, if advances into second round.
Beatriz Haddad Maia was initially expected to be a top seed, as the Brazilian was scheduled to play in the entry list. Haddad Maia has won the tournament in Birmingham last year, but will not defend her title, as she pulled out from the event just before the reveal of main draw. The time after reaching semifinals of Roland Garros and advancing into top 10 of WTA rankings is not easy for Haddad Maia. She suffered an upset in first round of this week's tournament in Nottingham, losing to Daria Snigur in quite an easy manner. As it occured, Haddad Maia suffers a knee injury, which prevents her to start in Rothesay Classic. This means, the current world's number 10 does not defend any of 500 points gained during the same two weeks last year.
Three players from UK, who dominated this week's tournament in Nottingham, filling out the 3 out of 4 semifinals spots, will also play in Birmingham next week. Interestingly, the draw have matched up two of them, as Jodie Burrage and Harriet Dart got wild cards and set up an exciting all-British pairing in the first round, while Katie Boulter starts from the match against Lin Zhu. Elina Svitolina is awarded with main draw wild card and starts the tournament from an interesting clash against the youngster from Czech Republic, Linda Fruhvirtova.
Another wild card goes to Venus Williams, who got placed in a really stacked part of the draw. Williams plays a tough match against Camila Giorgi in first round. The 2nd seed Jelena Ostapenko plays Linda Noskova and the winner of this match will face Williams or Giorgi in second round. The bottom half of main draw delivers another electric match-up in first round, as the 4th seed Anastasia Potapova will play against Marta Kostyuk.
Here is the main draw of WTA 250 Rothesay Classic:
