Taipei, Oct. 15 (CNA) Twelve players ranked in the WTA's (Women's Tennis Association) top 100, including Jarmila Groth of Australia and Kimiko Date-Krumm of Japan, have entered the 2010 OEC Taipei Ladies Open, organizers said Friday.
The top-seeded Groth, who won the tournament in its first year in 2008, has the highest ranking of any player in the field at No. 42, followed by Date-Krumm at No. 56.
They will be joined by local favorites Chan Yung-jan, Chang Kai-chen, Hsieh Su-wei and Chuang Chia-jung in front of hometown crowds at Taipei Arena.
The total purse for the ITF (International Tennis Federation) event is US$100,000, according to the Chinese Taipei Tennis Association (CTTA), which is organizing the tournament.
ITF tourneys are a tier below WTA events, which have minimum purses of US$220,000 and attract higher seeded players.
Forty-year-old veteran Date-Krumm, who retired in 1993 and returned to tennis in 2008, and Alicia Molik, the women's singles bronze medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics, who ranked as high as 8th and is now 98th, are among a competitive group of players capable of winning this year's event.
Germany's 21-year-old rising star Sabine Lisicki, a women's singles quarterfinalist at Wimbledon in 2009, is expected to wow crowds with serves that can reach nearly 200 kilometers per hour.
Alla Kudryavtseva of Russia, Romani Oprandi of Italy, Ayumi Morita of Japan and China's Peng Shuai are among other notable foreign competitors.
Chan Yung-jan, the highest-ranked Taiwanese player on the women's tour at No. 81, enters the tournament as the defending champion after defeating Morita 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 in the women's singles final last year. (By Chris Wang) enditem/ls