Previewing tennis' WTA tour return, and leap of faith: Palermo

Professional tennis will return this week in Palermo. It will also take a leap into the unknown.

Little more than half an hour before qualifying was set to begin on Saturday, the WTA announced that an unnamed player had tested positive for the coronavirus. The matches went on, the event continued as scheduled, but the questions remained: Will that be the last positive test? How many more can the tournament survive? Palermo isn’t in a corona-free bubble, and as baseball fans in the U.S. have discovered over the last week, that leaves everyone involved in staging a competition vulnerable to the virus. Right now, we can only hope for the best.

On the plus side, we can also peruse the first real, live, meaningful draw in over four months. A couple of the biggest names who were supposed to be here—Simona Halep, Johanna Konta—have pulled out. Tournament officials can only offer roughly $200,000 of the usual $250,000 in prize money. The stands will be largely empty. But there will be ranking points on the line, and the competition will count. Even without any truly marquee names, that should be enough to grab our attention in a way that no summer exhibition has.

Fifteenth-ranked Petra Martic, a clay lover who reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, is the top seed. The woman who beat here there, Marketa Vondrousova, is the No. 2 seed. From there, in descending order, the rest of the Top 8 seeds are Maria Sakkari, Anett Kontaveit (who, in another world, won the 2020 Australian Open), Elise Mertens, Donna Vekic, Dayana Yastremska and Ekaterina Alexandrova. Other players of interest include 2018 Roland Garros and Wimbledon quarterfinalist Daria Kasatkina, Kiki Mladenovic, and Camila Giorgi.

Vondrousova and Martic, who faced each other in last year's French Open quarterfinals, are the top two seeds at this week's 31st Palermo Ladies Open in Italy. (Getty Images)

In general, this is a draw filled with players who have shown flashes of Top 10 talent on various big stages, but haven’t been consistent enough to permanently establish themselves among the elite. Martic is a subtly stylish all-courter. Vondrousova makes the drop shot into an entire sport of its own. Sakkari has grit and swagger. Kontaveit and Mertens are solid ball-strikers who have gradually gained confidence over the last two years. Yastremska is still raw at 20, but can hit winners from anywhere. While she’s just 24, Vekic has nearly a decade’s worth of experience on tour.

And how about Kasatkina? If anyone needed a break after 2019, it was the young Russian. One of the breakout players of 2018, when she reached two Grand Slam quarterfinals, she struggled to win a match last season and dropped all the way to No. 66. But she’s still just 23, and her racquet skills should still be intact. Now it will be a matter of putting her confidence back together. A clay-court tournament should be the ideal place for her to start.

First-round matches to watch: Martic vs. Alison Van Uytvanck; Alexandrova vs. Mladenovic

Whoever ends up winning this tournament, there’s only one victory that matters: A safe return for pro tennis.

Monday, July 27: Sofia Kenin | Monday, July 27: Elena Rybakina | Monday, July 27: Alex de Minaur, Dayana Yastremska, Casper Ruud | Tuesday, July 28: Stefanos Tsitsipas | Tuesday, July 28: Thiago Seyboth Wild | Wednesday, July 29: Amanda Anisimova | Wednesday, July 29: Brandon Nakashima | Thursday, July 30: Coco Gauff | Thursday, July 30: Caty McNally | Thursday, July 30: Jannik Sinner, Iga Swiatek | Friday, July 31: Felix Auger-Aliassime | Friday, July 31: Carlos Alcaraz | Saturday, August 1: Denis Shapovalov | Saturday, August 1: J.J. Wolf | Sunday, August 2: Bianca Andreescu | Sunday, August 2: Leylah Fernandez  | Sunday, August 2: Marketa Vondrousova, Miomir Kecmanovic