Guida Pavlyuchenko ai sorteggi infausti per Trevisan e Cocciaretto al tabellone WTA di Rouen
After the week dedicated to the qualifications for the final phase of the Billie Jean King Cup, the WTA circuit restarts from Stuttgart and Rouen to kick off the European clay court season. While the German tournament is now a fixed appointment on the calendar (it has been played there since 1978), Rouen is one of the new additions to this year’s calendar. In 2022 and 2023, the capital of Normandy had hosted a WTA 125 event in October, earning itself an obvious upgrade. Being held simultaneously with a 500 event like Stuttgart, the French 250 tournament is subject to new regulations limiting the presence of top 30 players, who are directed towards the higher category tournament. As a result, only two players ranked in the top thirty are present in the draw: home favorite Caroline Garcia and Russian Pavlyuchenkova, the top seed. The Italians in the draw are Martina Trevisan and Elisabetta Cocciaretto, who have paid the price for not being seeded.
The draw was indeed quite unfavorable for them. Elisabetta drew Garcia, against whom she has lost all three previous matches dated between 2021 and 2022. However, the prediction is not completely closed. The French player seemed to have recovered after a definitely negative start to the season in Miami (where she reached the quarter-finals), but during the BJK Cup qualifiers weekend, she took a step back: she was defeated by Raducanu and then lost her singles spot to Clara Burel on the second day of matches. Meanwhile, Trevisan comes with 9 wins in the last 12 matches played in the past month, particularly achieved with victory in the Charleston Challenger.
The pairing for Trevisan is somewhat more ironic. The Florentine has indeed avoided the seeds but has practically gone from bad to worse, facing former world number 1 Naomi Osaka, who comes off a nice win in the BJK Cup against Putintseva in Tokyo. Last week, Martina took advantage of the ITF event in Saragossa to regain some good feelings after the first three months of 2024 were completely devoid of satisfaction (only three wins), but she still stopped in the semi-finals after two victories against players well within her reach. One advantage for the Italian is that they are playing on clay, especially because Osaka hasn’t played on clay for almost two years and, furthermore, will have had few days to adjust to the surface considering the transfer from Japan. There are no previous matchups between the two.
The top seed Pavlyuchenkova, who has not won a tournament in six years (the last one being in France, in Strasbourg), will debut against the French wildcard Robbe, born in 2000 and ranked 239th in the world. She is then likely to face her compatriot Blinkova in the quarter-finals and the third seed Kalinina in the semi-finals, who will have Alizè Cornet, one of Osaka or Trevisan, and theoretically, Mirra Andreeva in her path – a highly challenging journey. In the lower half of the draw, besides Garcia, there are the 4th seed Yuan (who will start against Sherif), 6th seed Stephens, and 7th seed Burel. The reigning champion Golubic, however, will not be present.
