Packed Field Heads To New Haven

A slew of Top 20 players are in New Haven, Connecticut this week for the Pilot Pen Tennis presented by Schick, all hoping to fine tune their games in the last week of play before the year's last Grand Slam, the US Open.
 
Headlining the field will be current world No.10 Anna Chakvetadze, who is hoping to rebound from a somewhat scratchy start to the summer hardcourt season, losing her second match at all three of her stops in Stanford, Los Angeles and Montréal. This has been a good event in the past for her, too: in her first appearance here in 2005, she made it all the way to the semis as an unseeded player. After a first round bye she opens in the second round against Virginie Razzano or Casey Dellacqua.
 
Daniela Hantuchova and Marion Bartoli, seeded No.2 and No.3 behind top seed Chakvetadze, both recently dropped out of the Top 10 but are hovering just outside the elite and could gain some ground this week. Hantuchova has been to the quarterfinals or better here three times, including a semifinal run in 2002; Bartoli has been to the quarterfinals here the last two years. Like Chakvetadze, Hantuchova and Bartoli will both receive first round byes, with the Slovak opening against either Olga Govortsova or Alisa Kleybanova and the Frenchwoman starting with Bethanie Mattek or Tsvetana Pironkova.
 
Round out the seeds are No.4 seed Agnes Szavay, No.5 seed Patty Schnyder, No.6 seed Flavia Pennetta, No.7 seed Alizé Cornet and No.8 seed Dominika Cibulkova. The field is so strong - there are nine Top 20 players - that world No.20 Nicole Vaidisova wasn't even seeded (she plays Cornet in the first round). Among the other unseeded threats are former world No.1 Amélie Mauresmo and recent Sony Ericsson WTA Tour titlists Maria Kirilenko and Caroline Wozniacki.
 
The world's No.1 doubles team, Cara Black and Liezel Huber, are also among the field, seeded No.1 in the doubles draw. Another star addition to the field also comes in doubles, as Lindsay Davenport partners Hantuchova.
 
This is the 11th staging of the Pilot Pen Tennis presented by Schick. Former champions are Steffi Graf (1998), Venus Williams (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002), Jennifer Capriati (2003), Elena Bovina (2004), Lindsay Davenport (2005), Justine Henin (2006) and Svetlana Kuznetsova (2007).

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