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
See also
*
Stuttgart Open – men's tournament
*
List of tennis tournaments
Notes
References
External links
Official site
{{navboxes, title=Previous women's tournament categories
(1990–2020)
, list1=
{{WTA Premier tournaments
{{WTA Tier II tournaments
Tennis tournaments in Germany
Indoor tennis tournaments
Hard court tennis tournaments
Clay court tennis tournaments
WTA 500 tournaments
Recurring sporting events established in 1978
1978 establishments in West Germany