Still in its infancy, the WTA tournament in Katowice brings professional tennis to Poland a few years after the Warsaw event ended.  It will feature only one top-15 player, but it’s the woman whom Polish fans most want to see.

Top half:  Returning to home soil might be just what the doctor ordered for Agnieszka Radwanska after a frustrating start to 2014.  Opportunities knocked for Radwanska at the Australian Open and Indian Wells, but distinctly lesser opponents routed her late in both tournaments.  Despite that underachieving trend, she should be favored against most of this modest field.  A Roland Garros champion four years ago, Francesca Schiavone  is a shadow of her former self.  More intriguing is last week’s Monterrey finalist, Jovana Jaksic, who will try to carry her momentum to a new continent.

The fourth seed in Katowice, Alize Cornet has has impressed early this year, especially with an upset of Serena Williams in Dubai that punctuated a Premier final run there.  Cornet may need to stay patient against the funky spins and slices of Monica Niculescu.  Another counterpuncher awaits in Klara Koukalova, playing her first tournament after finalizing a divorce that ended her life as Klara Zakopalova.  Both Cornet and Koukalova tend to play long matches, so fans should brace themselves for an epic.

Bottom half:  The good news for defending champion Roberta Vinci is that her favorite part of the season, the clay, looms directly ahead.  The bad news is that she has won only one match this year while losing to opponents such as Ana Konjuk, Casey Dellacqua, and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova.  Vinci’s top-20 ranking won’t last much longer if she can’t recapture her form soon.  Enigmatic compatriot Camila Giorgi will look to hit her off the court but may hit herself off the court sooner.  Less likely to challenge Vinci is grass specialist Tsvetana Pironkova, although the Bulgarian did win her first career title this year at Sydney.

Wielding one of the WTA’s most flamboyant backhands, Carla Suarez Navarro has established herself as a solid performer on all surfaces.  But she remains a clay specialist, like Vinci, so a semifinal between them would treat spectators to more finesse than first strikes.  Also like Vinci, Suarez Navarro shares a section with an enigmatic heavy hitter (Yanina Wickmayer) and a grass specialist (Magdalena Rybarikova).  In contrast to Vinci, however, she has compiled a respectable 16-8 record this year that should give her the confidence to solve those early tests.  Considering Radwanska’s pattern of underachievement and Vinci’s woeful slump, Suarez Navarro might be the favorite to capture Katowice this year. 

Formerly played before Indian Wells, the small clay event in Bogota now follows the March mini-majors in a placement more logical for its surface.  Only three top-50 women will make the trip to the Colombian capital, one of them ranked at exactly No. 50, which puts the defending champion in prime position.

Top half:  Achieving mixed results in March, world No. 8 Jelena Jankovic coupled a quarterfinal run at Indian Wells with an early exit in Miami.  Although her only major final came at the US Open, her most consistently productive surface has been clay.  Still, her sojourn in Charleston last week came to a meek end at the hands of Eugenie Bouchard.  The soft draw in Bogota makes a deeper run virtually inevitable for Jankovic, assuming that she stays healthy.  Her only notable pre-semifinal opposition comes from clay specialist Paula Ormaechea in a rematch of last year’s final, which the Serb won comfortably.

Another clay specialist in the diminutive Lourdes Dominguez Lino could face Jankovic in the semifinals, but she would struggle to cope with the Serb’s weight of shot.  Despite her Italian origins, Karin Knapp probably would prefer hard courts to clay.  So would most of the other women in this section beyond Dominguez Lino, such as the hard-serving Frenchwoman Kristina Mladenovic.

Bottom half:  Last year, Sloane Stephens proved that she can leave an impact on clay by reaching the second week of Roland Garros.  But her success has not extended to other tournaments on the surface, and she has produced largely listless results over the last two months.  Still looking for her first WTA final, Stephens eyes as good a chance as any in Bogota.  Few of the women near her have honed substantial expertise on clay, although home hope Mariana Duque-Marino will pose an intriguing opening test. 

Able to win a set from Serena Williams in Miami, Caroline Garcia snapped a 10-match losing streak in February.  She upset top-20 opponent Eugenie Bouchard that month, suggesting that she might edge closer to fulfilling her potential.  Garcia wields weapons better suited to fast courts, so the unseeded Irina-Camelia Begu or Romina Oprandi might outlast her on clay.  In general, few seeds in the bottom half of this draw dominate their sections, leaving possibilities more open than in the top half.