The Stuttgart Open, also known by its sponsored name Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, is a women's

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

tournament held in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, Germany (until 2005, in Filderstadt, a southern suburb of Stuttgart). Held since 1978, the tournament is the oldest professional women's indoor tournament in Europe. The event was part of the Tier II category from 1990 until 2008 and as of 2009 has been a Premier tournament on the

WTA Tour The WTA Tour (also known as the Hologic WTA Tour for sponsorship reasons) is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women and organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125 series, and third-tier is the ITF Wome ...

. The singles champion receives prize money and a

Porsche Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, usually shortened to Porsche (; see below), is a German automobile manufacturer specializing in luxury, high-performance sports cars, SUVs and sedans, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Th ...

sports car. Until 2008 the tournament was played on

hardcourt A hardcourt (or hard court) is a type of surface or floor on which a sport is played, most usually in reference to tennis courts. It is typically made of rigid materials such as asphalt or concrete, and covered with acrylic resins to seal the s ...

in autumn. Since 2009 it is played on

clay court A clay court is one of the types of tennis court on which the sport of tennis is played. Clay courts are built on a foundation of crushed stone, brick, shale, and other construction aggregate, aggregate, with a thin layer of fine clay particles ...

in spring, as a warm-up tournament to the

French Open The French Open (), also known as Roland-Garros (), is a tennis tournament organized by the French Tennis Federation annually at Stade Roland Garros in Paris, France. It is chronologically the second of the four Grand Slam (tennis), Grand Slam ...

, making it the first indoor clay court event on the women's tour. The players voted for the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix as their favourite Premier tournament in 2007, 2008, 2010–2012, 2014–2017. The tournament has been won by many former number ones and Grand Slam champions.

Martina Navratilova Martina Navratilova (, ; ; born October18, 1956) is a Czech-American former professional tennis player. She was ranked as the world No. 1 in women's List of WTA number 1 ranked singles tennis players, singles for 332 weeks (List of WTA number ...

holds the record for most singles wins at the event, with six titles between 1982 and 1992, in addition to eight doubles titles. Tracy Austin and Martina Hingis both come second with four wins each in the singles event, with Austin winning four consecutive. This is followed by

Lindsay Davenport Lindsay Ann Davenport Leach (born June 8, 1976) is an American former professional tennis player. She was ranked as the world No. 1 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 98 weeks (including as the year-end No. 1 four ...

and

Maria Sharapova Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (, ; born 19 April 1987) is a Russian former professional tennis player. She was ranked as the world No. 1 in women's singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 21 weeks. Sharapova won 36 WTA Tour-level sin ...

with three wins each.

History

The tournament was founded by businessman Dieter Fischer who had organized a men's exhibition tournament in Filderstadt in 1977 to open his tennis centre. After failing to schedule a men's event in 1978 a license for a Tier II women's tournament was purchased for $100,000 and the first edition was held in October 1978, won by 15-year old Tracy Austin. In March 1979 a men's tournament was held, won by

Wojciech Fibak Wojciech Fibak (; popularly Wojtek Fibak ; born 30 August 1952) is a Polish former professional tennis player, entrepreneur, and art collector. Fibak is best known for his doubles success with Dutch pro Tom Okker and Australian Kim Warwick, a ...

, but this event was discontinued as it required too much effort to organize two tournaments annually with a volunteer force. In 1992 a request for promotion to the Tier I category was rejected by the WTA on the grounds that the tournament's centre court, with a 3,000-seat capacity, was too small. In 2002 Fischer sold the tournament licence to Porsche who had been the official sponsor since the first edition.

Past finals

Singles

Doubles

Notes

References

External links

Official site
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