Mirra Andreeva will be the top seed for Linz Open and she will face either a former US Open winner or a German veteran in her opening match at the Austrian tournament.<\/p>\n
World No 10 Andreeva was not initially on the entry list, but she accepted a late wildcard and \u2013 as the highest-ranked player in the field \u2013 she went onto the first line of the draw sheet and earned a bye in the second round in the process.<\/p>\n
The 18-year-old will face either 2017 US Open champion Sloane Stephens, who also entered after receiving a wildcard, or the 38-year-old Tatjana Maria in her first encounter.<\/p>\n
If she gets past Stephens or Maria, Andreeva is projected to face fifth seed Sorana Cirstea in the quarter-final while fourth seed Jelena Ostapenko is a likely semi-final opponent.<\/p>\n
Ostapenko, though, will have to get past either World No 87 Julia Grabher or world No 45 Alex Eala<\/a> in the second round.<\/p>\n Rising star Eala, who is making her debut at the WTA 100 tournament, is playing in her first clay-court event of the season with her last tournament the Miami Open on the hard-courts in Florida where she reached the round of 16.<\/p>\n Alex Eala suffering from a problem Emma Raducanu has failed to resolve<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Iva Jovic and Madison Keys\u2019 prize money and ranking points from Charleston Open<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The winner of the Ostapenko\/Grabher\/Eala match will likely face seventh seed Ann Li in the quarter-final. The American takes on Dayana Yastremska first up before a meeting with either Katie Boulter or Elena-Gabriela Ruse.<\/p>\n Defending champion Ekaterina Alexandrova headlines the bottom section as the second seed and she will face either former world No 1 Karolina Pliskova or a qualifier in the second round.<\/p>\n A quarter-final encounter against eighth seed Sara Bejlek is on the cards, but the Czech faces Panna Udvardy first up and if she gets past the Hungarian, she will take on a qualifier in the second round.<\/p>\n If the seeds hold, then Alexandrova will meet third seed Liudmila Samsonova in the semi-final.<\/p>\n The Russian will meet either rising Austrian star Lili Tagger, who is just 18, or former world No 2 Paula Badosa in the second round, while she is projected to face sixth seed Jaqueline Cristian in the last eight.<\/p>\n Andreeva v Cirstea The tournament has been hit hard by withdrawals with Grand Slam winners Barbora Krejcikova, Marketa Vondrousova and Emma Raducanu all pulling out before the draw was made.<\/p>\n Daria Kasatkina, Emma Navarro, Antonia Ruzic and Clara Tauson were the other players to withdraw on the eve of the WTA 500 event.<\/p>\n The post Linz Open draw: Mirra Andreeva\u2019s late entry as Alex Eala faces Austrian veteran<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mirra Andreeva will be the top seed for Linz Open and she will face either a former US Open winner or a German veteran in her opening match at the Austrian tournament. World No 10 Andreeva was not initially on the entry list, but she accepted a late wildcard and \u2013 as the highest-ranked player […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA News<\/h2>\n
Projected Quarter-Finals<\/h2>\n
\nOstapenko v Li
\nCristian v Samsonova
\nBejlek v Alexandrova<\/p>\n