There have been two WTA 250 events going on this week: the BNP Paribas Poland Open, and the 32nd Palermo Ladies Open. As is typical of these European tournaments the matches all take place while Albertans are either working or sleeping, but here's a brief summary of the past couple days of action.
On Tuesday in Italy we got to see Ukrainian cutie Katarina Zavatska (9/10) defeat Lizette Cabrera (7.5/10) in straight sets, big-titted local wonder Lucia Bronzetti (7.5/10) took down all-legs (and a tad of badonkadonk) in the form of Bulgaria's Viktoriya Tomova (8.5/10), and Luxembourg's sex bomb Mandy Minella (9.5/10) was crushed by Elena-Gabriela Ruse (8/10). By "we see" of course, we didn't get to see. Valeria Savinykh (8.5/10) lost to American Francesca Di Lorenzo (7.5/10) and her exquisitely shaped ass, the Amazonian Serb Olga Danilović (8/10) needed three sets to defeat pudgy but attainable Kamilla Rakhimova (7/10), Shuai Zhang (6.5/10) defeated Cristina Bucșa (7/10), Danielle Collins (9/10) survived her battle against German butterface Katharina Gerlach (6.5/10), and Lucrezia Stefanini (9/10) lost to the Singaporean from Perth, Astra Schwarma...er, I mean...Sharma (7.5/10).
Also on Tuesday up the road in Poland "we saw" the most American named American ever (Varvara Lepchenko, 7.5/10) defeated Marina Melnikova (7/10) after losing the first set, Aliaksandra Sasnovich (8/10) similarly had to win the last two sets to dispatch Weronika Baszak (6.5/10), Ekaterine Gorgodze (6.5/10) also had to win both after losing the first to "innocent" Russian honeytrap Anastasia Zakharova (8/10), and in the "homely versus ugly" match ugly (Irina-Camelia Begu, 6/10) defeated homely (Ysaline Bonaventure, 7/10) handily in straight sets. On the flip side of the coin Spain's Nuria Parrizas Diaz (9/10) beat cute-but-awkward Magdalena Frech (8.5/10) in her own land, Germany's cutest player Tamara Korpatsch (7.5/10) beat Olga Govortsova (8.5/10), Katarzyna Kawa (7.5/10) beat Tereza Mrdeza (7/10) in three sets, and finally Amina Anshba (9/10) beat Harmony Tan (6.5/10) in straight sets, removing not-Rosalind-Chao from the action.
On Wednesday Poland also saw Varvara Gracheva (7.5/10) take the second set but not the other two in a close match against the ever-adorable Viktória Kužmová (8/10), Jamie Loeb (8.5/10) was humiliated by Belgian bombshell Maryna Zanevska (9/10), Anna Karolina Schmiedlova (8/10) and her legs that neve quit squeaked out a narrow second set win and little else against Anna Bondár (7/0), and Tamara Korpatsch played again and another, better Weronika -- Weronika Falkowska (8/10) also lost in the process. The day ended off less than perfect, with Kristina Kucova (7/10) defeating Romanian Irina Bara (8/10).
Palmero action on Wednesday started off with Elena-Gabriela Ruse winning a walkover against Swiss angel Jil Teichmann (9/10) and depriving us of a gorgeous matchup. On the bright side we [that "we" again, from a person who was nose-deep in spreadsheets while this matchup took place... -ed] got to see France's pride Océane Dodin (9.5/10) take on Vitalia Diatchenko (9.5/10) where the Russian hottie ended up going home, Lucia Bronzetti beat the girl Thok Mok described as "a chunky chinky" Grace Min (6/10), another unpleasant asian in Qinwen Zheng (5.5/10) lost to Romania's Jaqueline Cristian (8.5/10).
Today in Italy, Sharma took down a hotter girl a second time by winning straight sets against Natalia Vikhlyantseva (8.5/10), Danilović powered through two close sets to defeat Zavatska, Zhang barely broke a sweat defeating Di Lorenzo, and America Danielle Collins (9/10) had a rough start before easily defeating Austrailia's Maddison Inglis (9/10) in what can best be called "The Battle of the Pretty". In Poland today Gorgodze defeated Lepchenko, a hottie-versus-hottie contest saw Kateryna Kozlova (9/10) win after losing the first set to Sasnovich, while a different hottie-verus-hottie matchup featured Diaz beating Anshba in straight sets. A much-less exciting pairing saw Kawa defeat Begu, while Zanevska and Kužmová battled for our hearts...Zanevska won.
Both Poland and Palermo are taking tomorrow off and resume play on Saturday. I'm looking forward to it because you might notice that the ratings for these events are far higher than any more recent events. I didn't get to watch much Wimbledon (and yes I still owe you the Friday night at Wimbledon story) but the hotness factor was far lower there than either of these events (Palermo would appear to be the better of the two).
I didn't get a chance to watch or cover the Hungarian Grand Prix or Prague Open last week. In Hungary the quarter-final saw Anhelina Kalinina (7.5/10) win when Danielle Collins retired, and Yulia Putintseva (8.5/10) won in three sets against Dalma Gálfi (8/10) in a bikini-girl battle. Putintseva went on to win in the final.
Over in Prague the final four was Tereza Martincová (9.5/10) defeating Greet Minnen (7/10) and Barbora Krejcikova (6.5/10) beat Xinyu Wang (6/10) before going on to dominate in the final.