Viktoria Tomova has made a very solid start to the current season and until this week was on a streak of five consecutive tournament appearances in which she recorded at least one win. That streak was broken at the WTA 250 in Rouen, where our women’s first racket had a 4-1 lead in the deciding set against local representative Varvara Gracheva, but suffered a reversal.
At the time, it was not known whether Tomova would get directly into the main draw of the WTA 1000 tournament in Madrid, as she was the first reserve for the main draw, but luck smiled on the Bulgarian and she will still participate directly in the actual part of the competition. Last year, our compatriot made her debut in the Spanish capital and entered the main draw as a “happy loser”, but lost to Julia Grabher in two sets at the start.
The draw for this year’s edition of the tournament decided that Vicky will open her campaign with a match against China’s Xinyu Wang, who is at number 42 in the world ranking, who has avoided the red carpet in every way during her career and last year had recorded 5 consecutive losses before the participation at Roland Garros, where he reached the third round. So far, Tomova and Wang have met twice, and the Asian has emerged victorious in each of these cases. A curious detail about the 22-year-old tennis player is that she is a 2-time Slam singles champion and is considered one of the most talented players in the WTA
If the Bulgarian does record a debut success over Wang, she will have the opportunity for a third time this season to face 21st seed Caroline Garcia, who knocked her out in Indian Wells and Miami, but Tomova performed superbly in their first meeting of the year and was not far from sensational against the former winner of the WTA Finals trophy.
In this lower hour of the scheme, there are other names of the rank of Aryna Sabalenka, Marketa Vondroushova, Barbora Krejcikova, Kinwen Zhang, Daniel Collins and the sensational finalist from Stuttgart – Marta Kostyuk, who in the third round could compete with the champion of the same competition , namely Elene Rybakina.
The top half is led by Iga Šviontek, and she could compete with one of Elina Svitolina and Victoria Azarenka already in the 1/8 finals. Maria Sakary also reached this quarter, and Corey Goff and former champion Ons Jabert are among the possible opponents for the Polish woman in the semi-final phase.
The undisputed highlight of the first-round program is the meeting between Emma Radukanu and former number one Karolina Pliskova, while Paula Badosa appears to have overcome the injury she suffered in Stuttgart and is also in contention.
Complete draw for the WTA 100 in Madrid:
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