The Acura Classic at the beautiful La Costa Resort and Spa has long been a favorite stop for Tour players, and when the best competitors in women’s tennis heard that 2007 would be the final swan song for the tournament, they wasted no time in signing up for the Tier I event.
Three Grand Slam champions – Maria Sharapova, Martina Hingis, and Venus Williams – are headlining this year’s field, along with top ten players Jelena Jankovic, Anna Chakvetadze, Nadia Petrova, and Daniela Hantuchova.
As a Tier I tournament, the main draw at the Acura Classic in San Diego has fifty-six singles players and thirty-two doubles teams competing for $1,340,000 dollars in prize money.
Maria Sharapova, Jelena Jankovic, Anna Chakvetadze, Nadia Petrova, Marion Bartoli, Daniela Hantuchova, Martina Hingis, and Dinara Safina received first round byes.
A Quick Look at the Draw
Top seed and defending champion Maria Sharapova is returning to action for the first time since Wimbledon after sitting out the Fed Cup semifinals because of her lingering shoulder injury. The shoulder problem has hampered her serve, something her opponents on hardcourts will be looking to exploit. She could run into the big hitting Israeli Shahar Peer in the quarterfinals, and if Maria’s arm is still costing her double-digits of double-faults, look for Peer to reach the semifinals. Ironically, Peer is up against her new doubles partner, Sania Mirza, in the first round.
Second seed Jelena Jankovic played so much tennis during the first half of the season that the genial Serb decided to award herself with a brief vacation after Wimbledon. Rested mentally and physically, the world No. 3 is a favorite to win any tournament – as long as Justine Henin is not in the draw. Henin is not competing this year in San Diego, but Jankovic could face a tough match in the quarterfinals against Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli or the hardcourt loving Elena Dementieva.
Anna Chakvetadze has played almost as much tennis this season as Jelena Jankovic, but unlike Jankovic, she has not had the advantage of a recent vacation. She has played five events in a row, including back-to-back wins at Cincinnati and Stanford. As the third seed, she will get a few days to recover from her grueling singles and doubles week at the Bank of the West Classic, however with Venus Williams and Daniela Hantuchova in her quarter, she will need to be ready to hit the court running.
Fourth seed Nadia Petrova has almost zero points to defend from now until the US Open, so she needs to take advantage of competing on the hardcourts in the United States in hopes of bagging some much needed ranking points. She is not the best hardcourt player on Tour, but she generates plenty of power from her forehand wing and is willing to wait for the outright winner. Lack of consistency and mental strength has always been among Petrova’s biggest weaknesses, and she’ll need plenty of both if she wants to get past Martina Hingis, the tour’s wiliest player, in the quarterfinals.
this years draw of the acura classic looks great and im really excited to see venus williams and hopefully marion bartoli bounces back from last weeks loss in the 1st round and with some great top10 players on the virgue to win the usopen series we also welcome to the acura classic is last years champion maria sharapova everyones saying shes the hot favourite but its always good to see her in action the acura classic is showing that she will also want to retain last years us open championships grand slam title as she beat justine henin of belguim and the current world number one who was also excpected to play at the acura classic this weekend was also serena williams and ana ivanovic.