Belinda Bencic and Anna-Lena Friedsam are on the comeback path – there’s a little help for the two of them at Generali Ladies Linz.
Tournament director Sandra Reichel has not made it easy to decide who will receive the wildcards for the main competition of the WTA tournament “Upper Austria Ladies Linz” in addition to the Austrian Barbara Haas.In the presence of tournament ambassador Barbara Schett, her choice ultimately fell on two players who had become fellow sufferers after protracted injuries: 20-year-old Swiss Belinda Bencic and 23-year-old German Ana-Lena Friedsam.The Austrian Julia Grabher received a wildcard for the qualification.
Bencic, who already won Grand Slam titles in Paris and Wimbledon in 2013, was in the quarter-finals at the US Open 2014, and in 2015 she won the WTA title in Eastbourne.So far the Swiss has won two WTA tournaments, her highest place in the WTA ranking was ranked 7th (22nd place).February 2016).Your current position: 196!In May Bencic had to undergo surgery on his left wrist.Now she feels ready for the comeback on the WTA tour.
Anna-Lena Friedsams also sees light at the end of the tunnel – after a long, injury-related time of suffering!The 23-year-old, who won a WTA-Challenger tournament in her career (2014 in Suzhou), had already reached 45th place in the world rankings (15th place).August 2016).Friedsam achieved one of her greatest successes in the first round of Linz in 2014 with a win (2:6,6:3,6:4) over Dominika Cibulkova, the Australian Open finalist in third place.After further victories over Jana Cepelova and Stefanie Vögele, Friedsam reached the semi-finals of a WTA tournament for the first time, losing to Karolina Pliskova.
On the 20th.In the match against Klara Koukalova at the “NÜRNBERGER Gastein Ladies” in July 2015, the Germans suffered a double torn ligament in the score of 6:1 and 4:0.After her return she reached the final in Linz, which she lost to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 4:6,3:6.
After defending champion Dominika Cibulkova, the French Open sensation winner Jelena Ostapenko canceled on Friday afternoon – she qualified for the semi-finals a few hours earlier in Beijing – Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova is the new number one at the premiere of “Upper Austria Ladies Linz”, followed by Barbora Strycova (CZE) and the
In addition to Julia Grabher, the two Germans Antonia Lottner and Isabella Pfennig (15 years old) and the Australian Isabelle Wallace were awarded further wildcards for the qualification.