Tournament Page: WTA Bucharest

http://gty.im/452097812

By Britwatch Team

  • Top Seeds: Simona Halep, Sara Errani, Anna Karolina Schmiedlova, Laura Siegemund
  • Defending Champion: Anna Karolina Schmiedlova
  • CLICK on our featured players for their latest stats from Tennis Abstract

BUCHAREST, ROUMANIA – Top seed Simona Halep will attempt to put her Wimbledon loss aside, returning to her home tournament after winning the inaugural edition in 2014

BUILD your own trip to destinations worldwide                                   

Interactive Draw & Results

WTA Bucharest 
Order of Play
Singles
Doubles
Qualifying

 

[1] Simona Halep

Following her breakout year winning six tournaments on every surface in 2013, Halep was the star of the show at the inaugural tournament in Bucharest, but gave her title defence a miss last year.

She has chosen to include it in her schedule on top of a pretty solid run in Wimbledon, losing to eventual finalist Angelique Kerber. The tour now has that strange lull where grass and clay court events pop up beore the US Open Series swing gets underway, and this year with added Olympics thrown in for good measure.

Halep – a former French Open finalist, might have hoped to do better than her run to the fourth round, but did collect the Madrid title, and should easily sail through the draw.

 

[2] Sara Errani

Last year’s defeated finalist returns to a surface that obviously feels like home. By far her best surface, the grass swing has not been her friend this year, with early exits at Eastbourne and Wimbledon, bit then her clay this year in Europe has been a bit of a disaster.

Hopefully she can pick up a bit of confidence before she heads to the hard court season – where she will hope to emulate one of her biggest career wins earlier this year in Dubai.

 

[3] Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova

Sadly after a breakthrough first Top 30 season winning her first two WTA titles (Katowice and Bucharest) and a runner up in Rio, this season has been a bit of a terror for her.

She has had no back to back wins since Wuhan last year where she reached the quarter-final. Since the start of the year, and excluding ITF level events, she has yet to win a match since Sydney, where she won her first round match against Timea Bacsinszky.

Unfortunately the defending champion crashed out in the first match of her title defence here in Bucharest.

 

[4] Laura Siegemund

Siegemund’s clay court season has not been bad at all thus far, with the quarter-final in Charleston on the green-grey clay before reaching the final in Stuttgart, but that form just could not carry through to the French Open when it counted.

No doubt though she will be glad to get off the grass, and back on to a surface that she obviously feels far more comfortable with.

 

 

Ones to Watch

[5] Monica Niculescu

One of the most entertaining characters on the tour, with one of the most unique styles of play, Niculescu returns to see if she can go better than her run to the semi-finals two years in a row – is this her year?

[8] Cagla Buyukakcay

From going from the first Turkish player to win a WTA quarter-final in 2014, she went the whole hog and won her first title in Istanbul. She’s the eighth seed here, but with defending champion Schmiedlova already out as we publish the review her quarter is there for the taking.

The Bucharest Open takes place between 11-17 July.