Apia International Sydney Tennis - Australian Open Series

Stosur drawn to meet Williams

Medibank International Saturday 10 January 2009 8 Comments »

Top seed, US Open champion and world No.2 Serena Williams will begin her Australian campaign at the Medibank International Sydney with a first round match against Australian No.1 Samantha Stosur.

If the American world No.2 can get past Stosur, she could face another Australian – Casey Dellacqua, who plays Italian Sara Errani – in the second round.

“That is a tremendous match for a first round and shows how exciting the Medibank International Sydney is,” said Tournament Director Craig Watson.

The match is one of a host of tantalising first round encounters including the keenly anticipated meeting of defending men’s champion Dmitry Tursunov and former world No.7 Frenchman Richard Gasquet.

“That’s a difficult first match,” said Tursunov, who who met fans at the public draw held at Myer Department Store in the city centre.

“I was trying to get my name to come out maybe in another part. There are a lot of tough seeds and maybe there can be some upsets and I hope I can have a few upsets.”

Gasquet is one of the form players early in 2009 having defeated compatriot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarterfinals of the Brisbane International last night while Tursunov will be out to repeat his efforts from last year’s Medibank International Sydney, when he defeated Aussie Chris Guccione in the final.

The top four men’s seeds – Novak Djokovic, Gilles Simon, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and David Nalbandian – all have byes in the first round.

Australian Lleyton Hewitt, a four-time winner of the Medibank International Sydney will start his challenge against Frenchman Julien Benneteau. This will be their third meeting and the head-to-head is 1-1. Benneteau won their last match in February last year.

The winner of that match will take on either eighth seed Mardy Fish or Janko Tipsarevic. Last year’s finalist Chris Guccione plays the sixth seed Tomas Berdych in the first round.

The women’s draw is evenly spread out. Joining the top seed in the top half are Olympic gld medallist and third seed Elena Dementieva who plays compatriot Ekaterina Makarova, sixth seed Agniezska Radwanska and eighth seed Carloina Wozniacki of Denmark.

In the bottom half the second seed Dinara Safina, winner of the Olympic silver medal and the finalist at the French Open, will kick start her campaign against Romanian Sorana Cirstea while the ever-popular fifth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova, runner-up at the 2008 Medibank International Sydney, plays Peng Shuai of China.

“She is a tough opponent because she plays with two hand on both sides,” said Kuznetsova, who like her compatriot Tursunov was on hand at the draw.

Joining them in the same half are fourth seed Vera Zvonareva and seventh seed Nadia Petrova who plays the fast rising French girl Alize Cornet.

Download the women’s singles draw

Download the men’s singles draws

Photos

Tags: Dmitry Tursunov, Lleyton Hewitt, Richard Gasquet, Sam Stosur, Serena Williams

You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.