Ahn Top Seed as Qualifying Begins Sunday for WTA's Return in US; Three Women's Seeds, Including Defending Champion, Fall in First Round of ITA National Summer Championships

Five months without WTA- and ATP-points-earning professional tennis comes to an end Sunday at the Top Seed Open in Nicholasville Kentucky, with the WTA International tournament beginning its qualifying. 

Former Stanford star Kristie Ahn is the top seed in qualifying, with Margarita Gasparyan of Russia the No. 2 seed. Wild cards for the tournament were not announced ahead of the qualifying or main draws, but for qualifying, all four wild cards were given to Americans.

Jamie Loeb(North Carolina), Quinn Gleason(Notre Dame), 2019 USTA 18s National champion Katie Volynets and veteran Bethanie Mattek-Sands were awarded spots in the 24-player draw, with six players advancing to the main draw. 

Ahn will take on Romania's Gabriela Talaba, the former Texas Tech star Sunday morning, while Loeb has drawn Gasparyan. Gleason's opponent is No. 3 seed Anna Kalinskaya of Russia, and another interesting matchup is between No. 9 seed Usue Arconada and 18-year-old Hailey Baptiste. Arconada and Baptiste both trained for many years at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park Maryland. Volynets will play No. 8 seed Olga Govortsova of Belarus, and Mattek-Sands has drawn No. 12 seed Varvara Lepchenko. 

Sunday's order of play is here, and the qualifying draw is here.

At the professionals tours' first tournament in five months, at the WTA event in Palermo Italy, No. 4 seed Anett Kontaveit of Estonia will face unseeded Fiona Ferro of France for the title. Kontaveit defeated top seed Petra Martic of Croatia 6-2, 6-4 and Ferro beat unseeded Camila Giorgi of Italy 2-6, 6-2, 7-5 in today's semifinals. 

The first round of the ITA National Summer Championships is complete, with all 16 of the men's seeds posting victories.  

Three of the women's seeds, including two top 8 seeds, lost their opening round matches.

No. 4 seed Anna Rogers, a fifth year senior at North Carolina State and the defending ITA National Summer champion, lost to Sierra Berry 7-6(6), 6-4. No. 7 seed Tatiana Makarova, a rising senior at Texas A&M, lost to Lizanne Boyer 7-5, 3-6, 1-0, and another Aggie rising senior, No. 16 seed Riley McQuaid, lost to West Alabama rising junior Haina Franco 6-0, 6-4.

For more on today's action, see this recap from the ITA.