Dallas will host WTA Tennis for the first time since the mid 1990s with the first ever Texas Tennis Open.
Dallas has a rather special place in the history of women's tennis, the Houston Racquet Club being the venue for the Virginia Slims International, the then controversial eight-woman professional event which began in 1970 supported by Billie Jean King among others. It ran for a further 25 years with Martina Navratilova triumphing a record nine times.
The current stars of the WTA Tour have much to be grateful for to the early pioneers of professional women's tennis who helped lay the stonework for what we have now.
The tour is returning to Dallas for the first time in 16 years and it could be taken as a sign for things to come that this inaugural Texas Tennis Open is headed by a Chinese star, Peng Shuai. China have been a growing force in women's tennis for several years and after the success of Na Li, there will only be more stars from the East to come in future.
Shuai herself has been enjoying a fantastic season which has been forgotten in the wave of hype surrounding Li's French Open triumph. She's now ranked 15 in the world and will be hot favourite to claim a maiden title this week providing she's fully recovered from the injury which afflicted her in Cincinnati.
She will face challenges from Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova and a pair of Germans - Julia Goerges and Sabine Lisicki. Cibulkova, the pocket sized dynamo, is back in the top 20 after some impressive recent form but she too is waiting for a first title.
Lisicki's summer has been disrupted by injury but the heavy hitting German showed the world her potential by reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals in June and she's a top ten player of the world. The same could be said for Goerges who claimed a WTA Premier title on the clay of Stuttgart in the spring.
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