Top 10 players Maria Sakkari and Anett Kontaveit join a host of Russians in the main draw for the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy.

The WTA 500 event, which starts on Monday, features World No.8 Sakkari of Greece as the No.1 seed at the top of the draw. Sakkari will start her campaign with a first-round clash against one of the six Russians in the draw thus far, 77th-ranked Anastasia Potapova.

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Potapova defeated Sakkari in their first encounter, at Miami qualifying in 2017, in a third-set tiebreak. Sakkari leveled their head-to-head last year, defeating the Russian in straight sets in Abu Dhabi.

The top quarter also has a first-round match between No.8 seed Elise Mertens of Belgium and Alizé Cornet of France. Cornet has defeated Mertens in two of their three previous meetings.

Cornet reached her first Grand Slam quarterfinal last week at the Australian Open in her 63rd Grand Slam appearance. That set a new record for most Grand Slam showings before reaching a quarterfinal.

St. Petersburg info: Draws, prize money, storylines and everything you need to know

A hard-hitting opening-round battle between Camila Giorgi of Italy and Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia is another highlight of the top quarter. Giorgi leads that head-to-head 2-0. The winner of that match will face the winner of the Sakkari-Potapova match in the second round.

The second quarter contains two players who have had great success at St. Petersburg in the past, No.3 seed Elena Rybakina and No.6 seed Petra Kvitova. Former World No.2 Vera Zvonareva holds Russian interest in this quarter as well.

World No.12 Rybakina of Kazakhstan, who was the 2020 St. Petersburg runner-up to Kiki Bertens, will start off against a player from this weekend's qualifying event.

Kvitova of the Czech Republic won the St. Petersburg title in 2018, one of her 28 career WTA singles titles. Two-time Wimbledon champion Kvitova, who received a wildcard into the field, will meet a qualifier in her first-round match.

The third quarter is led by No.4 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who is the top-ranked Russian. World No.14 Pavlyuchenkova will meet Jaqueline Cristian of Romania in the first round. Cristian made her first WTA quarterfinal in St. Petersburg last year and has since risen to her current ranking of No.58, a career high.

2017 Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, seeded No.7, is also in this quarter and will take on Chinese wildcard Wang Xinyu in the opening round.

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World No.9 Kontaveit of Estonia resides in the bottom quarter as the No.2 seed. Kontaveit's opener is against Jil Teichmann of Switzerland, who sits just outside the seedings at World No.31.

Last year's Olympic gold medalist Belinda Bencic of Switzerland is also in this quarter as the No.5 seed. Bencic, who reached the St. Petersburg final in 2016, will start against Russian hope Veronika Kudermetova, who is the highest-ranked unseeded player at World No.29.

Bencic and Kudermetova have evenly split their six previous meetings, but Bencic has won the last two.

The player who finished second to Bencic at the Olympics, silver medalist Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic, is also in the bottom quarter. She will meet Sorana Cirstea of Romania in a first-round tilt between Top 40 players.