with numerous high-quality wins<\/a>, but her comeback won\u2019t be easy considering her first match back. Peyton Stearns is a tough out for anyone, known for her high-risk, high-reward style of play. This is an important litmus test for Boisson, and a chance for Stearns to steady her game. The winner of this match will have a tall task in the second round as they take on top seed Aryna Sabalenka.\u00a0<\/p>\n2. Taylor Townsend vs Katie Boulter<\/p>\n
Coming off a Sunshine Double run in doubles, Taylor Townsend will kick things off on clay in Madrid. Boulter has played a few clay tournaments leading up to Madrid and hasn\u2019t had the best results, but Boulter showed earlier this year that she can turn around poor runs of form. Townsend has had fairly consistent results in singles, but neither player is really the favorite in this matchup\u2014and especially not on clay. This match very much feels like it could be anyone\u2019s game, and whoever emerges victorious will face fifth seed Jessica Pegula in the second round.<\/p>\n
3. Yulia Putintseva vs Tereza Valentova<\/p>\n
With a lot of young players making waves in the tennis world, Tereza Valentova has flown somewhat under the radar. 19 years old and currently sitting just outside the Top 50, Valentova has shown a lot of promise on the WTA Tour. In contrast, Yulia Putintseva is an established player who has fallen far from her career high of No. 20. She\u2019s still capable of her best level, though, and her experience could prove too much for Valentova\u2019s raw talent, but this could also be a chance for Valentova to get a notable win. The winner of this match will take on 26th seed Marta Kostyuk in the second round.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The main draw of the WTA 1000 in Madrid is set to get underway on Tuesday, starting off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[652,97038,31290,23004,20706,18356,9979,25713,74010,23995,24451,54133,99,24842,428,129761,49160],"class_list":{"0":"post-597431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","9":"tag-ashlyn-krueger","10":"tag-clara-tauson","11":"tag-jessica-pegula","12":"tag-katerina-siniakova","13":"tag-katie-boulter","14":"tag-lois-boisson","15":"tag-magdalena-frech","16":"tag-marta-kostyuk","17":"tag-peyton-stearns","18":"tag-qinwen-zheng","19":"tag-sofia-kenin","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-taylor-townsend","22":"tag-tennis","23":"tag-tereza-valentova","24":"tag-yulia-putintseva"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597431","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=597431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}