Serena Williams Leads 2008 Bank of the West Classic Main Draw

The 2008 Olympus US Open Series officially begins on Monday with the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, California.

Former world number one and 2008 Wimbledon runner-up Serena Williams is the top seed at the Tier II tournament.

The Bank of the West Classic is the longest-running women-only professional tennis tournament in the world and is the first stop of the Olympus US Open Series.

As a Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Tier II event, the Bank of the West Classic features a 28-player singles draw and a 16-team doubles draw with total prize money of $600,000.

The top four seeds, Serena Williams (1), Anna Chakvetadze (2), Vera Zvonareva (3), and Daniela Hantuchova (4), each received a first-round bye.

Highlighting first-round play will be the match-up between former No. 1 and three-time Grand Slam champion Lindsay Davenport and the eighth-seeded Francesca Schiavone.

The seeds in the top half of the singles draw are Williams, Zvonareva, Patty Schnyder (5), and Schiavone. The bottom-quarter of the draw features the 2007 defending singles champion Anna Chakvetadze, Hantuchova, Marion Bartoli (6), Nadia Petrova (7), and defending doubles champions Sania Mirza and Shahar Peer.

The Bank of the West Classic will serve as an Olympic preview as a total of 23 players currently scheduled to play will compete for the Gold medal later this summer at the Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Of the group, 16 were announced as part of the Bank of the West Classic main singles draw.

An updated copy of the main draw is available at the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour website.

For more information about the Bank of the West Classic, please visit www.bankofthewestclassic.com.

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