Venus Williams of the United States will take on Rebecca Marino of Canada in the opening round of the 2022 WTA Washington Open on Tuesday.
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Venus Williams hasn’t played in a competitive match in almost a year; she last played in Chicago in August of 2021. Her tenth defeat of the year, coupled with just three victories, in that competition’s opening round against Wei-Su Hsieh revealed much about Venus‘ difficulties on the court. The situation had not improved in 2020 either. In reality, the multiple Grand Slam champion has only won one of her nine matches during that season, which occurred in Lexington in August 2020. She now makes her long-awaited return to the courts as a wildcard and without even being ranked in the WTA Rankings. Can she compete with a rival who has had some success on the ITF circuit.
She entered this competition as a huge favourite, but Rebecca Marino made light work of her triumphs in both of her qualifying rounds. In her first round, Marino defeated Valentini Grammatikopoulou 6-0, 4-6, 6-2 before Sachia Vickery forced a third set against her in the second round. The good news is that Marino was able to convince both players after winning the ITF Arcadia tournament on hard courts. In fact, Marino is currently 23-6 win-loss on hard court surfaces when taking into account her accomplishments at the ITF level and WTA tournament qualifiers. Can she convince people that the former world number one is back after an almost 12-month absence?
Venus Williams and Rebecca Marino will face each other in the first round of the 2022 Citi open on Tuesday, August 2. The WTA 500 competition is scheduled to start from August 1 and end on August 7 this year.
| Player | Seed |
| Jessica Pegula | 1 |
| Emma Raducanu | 2 |
| Simona Halep | 3 |
| Victoria Azarenka | 4 |
| Elise Mertens | 5 |
| Kaia Kanepi | 6 |
| Mayar Sherif | 7 |
| Clara Tauson | 8 |
The 2022 Citi Open will see six rounds of action excluding the qualifiers. These include the round of 64, round of 32, round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final. The tournament is scheduled to commence on August 1 and conclude on August 8 this year.
| Competition Stage | Date |
| Round of 64 | August 1 (Men’s) |
| Round of 32 | August 1 (Women’s), August 3 (Men’s) |
| Round of 16 | August 3 (Women), August 4 (Men’s) |
| Quarter-finals | August 5 (Women’s and Men’s) |
| Semi-finals | August 6 (Women’s and Men’s) |
