The opening day at the star-studded WTA 500 event in Stuttgart will be headlined by an exhibition-style tournament dubbed the Porsche One Point Challenge. Following the major success of the One Point Slam at the Australian Open, the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix is the first Tour-level tournament to follow suit, with 16 professional players, celebrities, and ambitious amateurs competing against each other for the first time in a knock-out format. As a result, there are only two main draw matches scheduled on day one at WTA Stuttgart but both promise plenty of excitement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WTA Stuttgart Day 1 Predictions
\nLaura Siegemund vs Magdalena Frech<\/p>\n
Head-to-head: Siegemund 1-0 Frech<\/p>\n
Former champion Laura Siegemund will get the main draw action fully underway in a match against world #39 Magdalena Frech. Siegemund famously made back-to-back finals at her home tournament and it is exactly a decade since she made her first as a qualifier and lost to compatriot Angelique Kerber. She lifted the title in 2017, but hasn\u2019t won a match in each of her last two visits.<\/p>\n
Magdalena Frech arrives at WTA Stuttgart on a four-match losing streak, with her last win coming in early March when she made the final in Merida. At 38, Siegemund remains fiercely competitive and excels in testing opponents\u2019 patience with her slice. Frech had to grind a victory against another veteran, Sara Errani, in last year\u2019s edition, and she will likely need the same approach to outlast the home favorite in this match.<\/p>\n
Prediction: Frech in 3<\/p>\n
Liudmila Samsonova vs Antonia Ruzic<\/p>\n
Head-to-head: first meeting<\/p>\n
Liudmila Samsonova had a dream main draw debut in this tournament four years ago. She made the semifinals without dropping a set and nearly beat Iga Swiatek, but eventually lost in three tight sets. The Russian has gone out at the first hurdle in each of her last three appearances in Stuttgart, although she\u2019s faced some serious competition in that time.<\/p>\n
Antonia Ruzic is not far off from establishing herself as a Top 50 player. She sits seven spots from that milestone. Samsonova has lost seven matches in a row and while that run has not been costly in terms of ranking, she is defending a ton of points in the next couple of months. The power is there, but her timing and decision-making have wobbled under pressure in recent matches. Ruzic has the tools to drag this into an uncomfortable territory and nick a win.<\/p>\n
Prediction: Ruzic in 3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opening day at the star-studded WTA 500 event in Stuttgart will be headlined by an exhibition-style tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[66317,66318,120879,127816,67266,67267,25713,93801,99,428,9985,9986,255013],"class_list":{"0":"post-581650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-antonia-ruzic","9":"tag-antonia-ruzic-predictions","10":"tag-laura-siegemund","11":"tag-laura-siegemund-predictions","12":"tag-liudmila-samsonova","13":"tag-liudmila-samsonova-predictions","14":"tag-magdalena-frech","15":"tag-magdalena-frech-predictions","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-tennis","18":"tag-tennis-picks","19":"tag-tennis-predictions","20":"tag-wta-stuttgart-predictions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}