Palermo Open

Latest Palermo Open News

The 2020 Palermo Ladies Open takes place from 3-9 August 2020 as WTA tennis returns from its hiatus: Watch and bet on WTA Palermo tennis matches live and get Palermo Ladies Open live stream access with livetennis.com.

WTA Palermo Open Live Streaming

WTA Palermo Ladies Open tennis will be live from Palermo, Italy from 3-9 August 2020 with play starting around 4pm local/3pm BST. Bookmaker bet365 are offering customers the opportunity to watch a live stream of the matches alongside in-play betting.

Watch and bet on WTA Palermo tennis live at bet365 > live streaming > tennis (geo-restrictions apply; funded account required or to have placed a bet in the last 24 hours to qualify)

How to watch & bet on WTA Palermo live streams with bet365

1. Visit the bet365 website

2. Sign into your account or register for a new one

3. Select Live Streaming

4. Select ‘Tennis’ from the ‘All Sports’ dropdown menu

5. Enjoy a live stream & in-play betting for WTA Palermo Open tennis, live from Palermo, Italy from 3-9 August 2020

PLEASE NOTE: You must have a funded account or have placed a bet in the last 24 hours in order to watch tennis; geo-restrictions apply.

WTA Palermo Tournament Schedule

Palermo Ladies Open 2020

Date – Time Event Name Location
Monday 3 August 15:00 BST R1 matches Country Time Club, Palermo, Italy
Tuesday 4 August 15:00 BST R1 & R2 matches Country Time Club, Palermo, Italy
Wednesday 5 August 15:00 BST R1 & R2 matches Country Time Club, Palermo, Italy
Thursday 6 August 15:00 BST R2 matches Country Time Club, Palermo, Italy
Friday 7 August 15:00 BST QFs Country Time Club, Palermo, Italy
Saturday 8 August 17:30 BST SFs Country Time Club, Palermo, Italy
Sunday 9 August 18:30 BST Final Country Time Club, Palermo, Italy

All singles and doubles matches are available to stream live via bet365 for customers with funded accounts.

WTA Palermo Open 2020 Order of Play

Here is the full order of play for Friday 7 August at the Palermo Ladies Open.

When is the WTA Palermo Open 2020?

The 2020 WTA Palermo Open will be played from 3-9 August. It marks the resumption of top-level professional tennis, as the ATP and WTA Tours were suspended in early March due to the global health crisis.

When it begins on 3 August, the Palermo Ladies Open will be the first WTA tournament since the tournaments in Monterrey and Lyon ended on 8 March.

Qualifying for the Palermo Ladies Open will be played 1-2 August, with main-draw women’s matches beginning on 3 August.

WTA Palermo Open Seeds 2020

Here is a full list of seeded players at the Palermo Ladies Open in 2020 along with their WTA ranking and their latest result.

 

Seed Player Ranking Latest Result
1 Petra Martic 15 R1: d. Alison van Uytvanck, 6-0, 6-3

R2: d. Ludmilla Samsonova (Q), 5-7, 6-4, 6-2

QF: Faces Aliaksandra Sasnovich (Q)

2 Marketa Vondrousova 18 R1: Lost to Kaja Juvan (Q), 6-1, 5-7, 4-6
3 Maria Sakkari 20 R1: Lost to Kristyna Pliskova, 4-6, 4-6
4 Anett Kontaveit 22 R1: d. Patricia Maria Tig, 6-3, 6-3

R2: d. Laura Siegemund, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2

QF: Faces Elisabetta Cocciaretto (WC)

5 Elise Mertens 23 R1: Lost to Aliaksandra Sasnovich (Q), 0-6, 2-6
6 Donna Vekic 24 R1: d. Arantxa Rus, 6-1, 6-2

R2: Lost to Elisabetta Cocciaretto (WC), 2-6, 4-6

7 Dayana Yastremska 25 R1: d. Sara Sorribes Tormo, 6-3, 6-4

R2: d. Oceane Dodin (LL), 6-2, 6-4

QF: Faces Camila Giorgi

8 Ekaterina Alexandrova 27 R1: d. Kristina Mladenovic, 5-7, 6-0, 6-1

R2: Lost to Fiona Ferro, 5-7, 2-6

WTA Palermo Open Players 2020

As the first WTA Tour event to take place since March, the 31st Palermo Ladies Open has attracted a strong field.

While the 2019 draw was headlined by a top-10 player in Kiki Bertens, who eventually finished runner-up, the second seed was world no. 53 Alize Cornet and the champion, Jil Teichmann of Switzerland, was ranked world no. 82 at the time.

But the lowest-ranked player to get direct entry into the main draw in 2020 is world no. 69 Kristyna Pliskova.

Clearly the WTA’s top players are anxious to get back to action and there’s no better place for many, especially those based in Europe, to do so than the clay courts of Palermo, the capital of Sicily.

World no. 2 Simona Halep was originally slated to lead the field at the Palermo Open but withdrew due to rising COVID-19 cases in Romania and ‘anxieties about international air travel’.

Johanna Konta, ranked world no. 14, has also pulled out of Palermo to play Lexington instead.

Petra Martic leads the field at the 2020 Palermo Ladies Open (PA Images)

Petra Martic

Like Halep and Konta the top player in her country, Croatia’s Martic won her maiden WTA Tour title on clay in Istanbul in 2019 and went on to reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the French Open, knocking out second seed Karolina Pliskova on her way.

The world no. 15 will be making her debut in Palermo in 2020 and looking to recover the form that saw her make a semifinal run in Dubai in February.

Marketa Vondrousova was a French Open finalist in 2019 (© Cynthia Lum/Icon SMI via ZUMA Press)

Marketa Vondrousova

The fourth top-20 player in the Palermo Ladies Open field is Marketa Vondrousova, the latest top player to come out of the Czech Republic.

Just 21 years old, Vondrousova was the first teenager to make a Grand Slam final in 10 years when she finished runner-up to Ashleigh Barty at the French Open in 2019. Unfortunately, injury sidelined her for the rest of the season, but Vondrousova had already reached two clay-court WTA finals earlier in the season and is clearly going to be a force to be reckoned with on clay. The world no. 15 will be making her debut in Palermo when the tournament begins on 3 August.

Maria Sakkari

The third top-20 player currently scheduled to appear at the 2020 Palermo Ladies Open, world no. 20 Sakkari won her maiden title on clay in Rabat in 2019, defeating Konta in the final.

Sakkari went on to make the semifinals of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia and scored five wins over top-10 players throughout the 2019 season. She reached the semifinals of the St Petersburg Ladies Trophy in February 2020 and will be making her main-draw debut in Palermo – she lost in qualifying in 2012.

Anett Kontaveit

Currently positioned just outside the top 20 at world no. 22, Estonia’s Kontaveit is a tall, powerful player who has ranked inside the world’s top 15.

Kontaveit has finished runner-up at prestigious WTA tournaments in Stuttgart and Wuhan and was a semifinalist at the Miami Open in 2019. At the beginning of 2020, she reached her first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the Australian Open and has two wins over top-10 players this season already.

Elise Mertens

The latest top player to come out of Belgium, Mertens shot to prominence when she made a storming run to the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2018 and was ranked as high as world no. 12.

Mertens has won five WTA career titles including two on clay and the Qatar Total Open in Doha in 2019. She reached the last 16 of the Australian Open in January.

Donna Vekic

One of seven top-25 players in the Palermo Ladies Open field, world no. 24 Vekic began reaching WTA finals and winning titles when she was just a young teenager and broke into the top 20 after a very consistent 2019 season, which saw her reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the US Open and reach finals in Nottingham and St Petersburg. In 2020, she won back-to-back matches in Adelaide and at the Australian Open before the WTA Tour was suspended.

Palermo Open Tournament Information

WTA Palermo Palermo Ladies Open
Dates 3-9 August 2020
Location Palermo, Italy
Venue Country Time Club
Surface Outdoor clay courts
Category WTA International
Draw size 32 singles/16 doubles
First played 1988
Most titles Anabel Medina Garrigues (5)
Prize money US$220,000
Reigning champions Singles: Jil Teichmann

Doubles: Cornelia Lister/Renata Voracova

About the Palermo Open

The 31st Palermo Ladies Open takes on new prominence in 2020 as it will be the first WTA Tour event played in almost four and a half months – but the tournament has a long history.

The Palermo Ladies Open was first played in 1988 and Italian players featured in three of the first four finals, although none won the title. Becoming a WTA Tier V in 1990, the tournament shifted between Tier IV and Tier V status until 2009 when it became a WTA International tournament under the new system, offering 280 ranking points to the winner.

Palermo is the capital of Sicily in Italy and is over 2,700 years old. Unfortunately, the tournament left the city in 2014 and was not held again until 2019, when it made a triumphant return to the calendar. Jil Teichmann of Switzerland made an impressive run through the draw, defeating Kiki Bertens, a top-10 player and that year’s Madrid Open champion, in the final.

The 2000 French Open champion Mary Pierce was the first player to win back-to-back titles at the Palermo Ladies Open, but the record for most titles is held by Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues, who won five times between 2001 and 20011. She is the only player in WTA Palermo history to win three in a row (2004-6).

It was not until 2008 that an Italian player would triumph in Palermo, when Sara Errani claimed the title, but she was swiftly followed by another as Flavia Pennetta defeated Errani in the tournament’s first all-Italian final in 2009. Errani took a second title in 2012, the same year she reached the final of the French Open, and Roberta Vinci because the third Italian woman to win in Palermo when she triumphed over Errani in the 2013 final.

Played on outdoors clay in early August, the Palermo Open offers the chance for players who prefer competing on clay one last opportunity for glory on the surface – or, in 2020, the chance to warm up for the French Open, held unusually in late September.

WTA Palermo Open Ranking Points

Here is a breakdown of the ranking points awarded by the WTA Tour for reaching various rounds at an International event like the Palermo Open.

 

Round Points
Champion 280
Final 180
Semifinal 110
Quarterfinal 60
R16 30
R32 1

 

WTA Palermo Open Champions

Here is a complete list of players who have triumphed at the Palermo Open.

Former Palermo champions

Year Champion Runner-up
1988 Karin Kschwendt Marzia Grossi
1989 Janine Thompson Laura Golarsa
1990 Isabel Cueto Barbara Paulus
1991 Mary Pierce Sanra Cecchini
1992 Mary Pierce (2) Brenda Schultz
1993 Radka Bobkova Mary Pierce
1994 Irina Spirlea Brenda Schultz
1995 Irina Spirlea (2) Sabine Hack
1996 Barbara Schett Sabine Hack
1997 Sabine Testud Elena Makarova
1998 Patty Schnyder Barbara Schett
1999 Anastasia Myskina Angeles Montolio
2000 Henrieta Nagyova Pavlina Nola
2001 Anabel Medina Garrigues Cristina Torrens Valero
2002 Mariana Diaz Oliva Vera Zvonareva
2003 Dinara Safina Katarina Srebotnik
2004 Anabel Medina Garrigues (2) Flavia Pennetta
2005 Anabel Medina Garrigues (3) Klara Koukalova
2006 Anabel Medina Garrigues (4) Tathiana Garbin
2007 Agnes Szavay Martina Muller
2008 Sara Errani Mariya Koryttseva
2009 Flavia Pennetta Sara Errani
2010 Kaia Kanepi Flavia Pennetta
2011 Anabel Medina Garrigues (5) Polona Hercog
2012 Sara Errani (2) Barbora Zahlavova Strycova
2013 Roberta Vinci Sara Errani
2014-8 Not played
2019 Jil Teichmann Kiki Bertens

 

Palermo Ladies Open tennis is live from Palermo, Italy from 3-9 August, with play starting around 4pm local/3pm BST. Bookmaker bet365 are offering customers the opportunity to watch a live stream of the matches alongside in-play betting.

Watch and bet on WTA tennis live at bet365 > live streaming > tennis (geo-restrictions apply; funded account required or to have placed a bet in the last 24 hours to qualify)

How to watch & bet on WTA tennis

1. Visit the bet365 website

2. Sign into your account or register for a new one

3. Select Live Streaming

4. Select ‘Tennis’ from the ‘All Sports’ drop down menu

5. Enjoy a live stream & in-play betting for Palermo Open tennis, live from Palermo, Italy from 3-9 August 2020

PLEASE NOTE: You must have a funded account or have placed a bet in the last 24 hours in order to watch tennis; geo-restrictions apply.