WTA tennis heads to Kentucky in 2020 restart 

In the second week of the WTA Tour's return to action following the COVID-19 pandemic, a star-studded field will descend on a suburb for Lexington, Ky. for the Top Seed Open presented by Bluegrass Orthopaedics.

In her first tour-level match since a third-round loss to Wang Qiang at the Australian Open in January, 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams leads a main draw that boasts three other major winners in Victoria Azarenka, Sloane Stephens and Venus Williams. Top 20 stars Aryna Sabalenka and Johanna Konta, and rising American teenagers Amanda Anisimova, Coco Gauff and Caty McNally are also among those competing.

The International-level event was added to the WTA calendar in early July, as an alternative to the Citi Open in Washington, D.C., which was canceled this year in the aftermath of the pandemic. The tournament venue, the Top Seed Tennis Club in Nicholasville, had hosted a prestigious event on the ITF World Tennis Tour since 1997.

"I never expected to be playing here in Kentucky, but it's close to Florida and easy to get here for me, and I'm excited," Williams told reports in a virtual pre-tournament press conference on Saturday. 

"There won't be fans here... but it's cool. We've been stuck at home for six months and I've never been home for that long since I was a teenager. Even when I was pregnant, I was traveling a lot to so many different places, so it's been a long time since I've been home that long. [That] was nice, but it's also a really cool opportunity to come to Kentucky. I've played through so many generations and so many different things, and I honestly feel cool to be able to play through this era and say, 'I remember when it first happened.'

"That's how I'm trying to look at it, because it's something that the whole world is going through, not just us as tennis players or us as athletes. The whole world is going through this pandemic, and right now, I think that sport is one of the few things that can almost provide a good breath of fresh air or a sigh of relief to people that are really still stuck in their homes."

Williams last played a competitive tennis match in February, as she helped Team USA to a 3-2 win over Latvia in the Fed Cup Qualifiers in Everett, Wash., where she beat former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko and fell on the second day to Anastasija Sevastova. 

American Jessica Pegula is the de facto 'defending champion' after having won her first WTA singles title last year in the nation's capital. Other Americans to earn direct acceptance are Jennifer Brady, CiCi Bellis,  Madison Brengle, Lauren Davis and Bernarda Pera, while McNally and Shelby Rogers have been in the recipients of main draw wild cards. Kristie Ahn leads 14 Americans in the qualifying draw.

Main draw play at the International-level event, which will be broadcast on Tennis Channel, begins on Monday, Aug. 10 and the tournament is slated to conclude on Sunday, Aug. 16.