Valencia, 15 September: Trevisan's comeback meets a home left-hander, and three more first-round stories

The clay in Valencia is dry, the draw has just been cracked open, and the first round already reads like a set of short biographies rather than a schedule. There is a former champion of this tournament coming back from foot surgery, a French player who did not touch a racket for seven months after knee surgery, two Spaniards playing five minutes from home, and a qualifier from Morocco who spent this season learning what it feels like to win matches that matter. None of these names will headline a Grand Slam next week. All of them have something to prove by Tuesday evening.

What ties the day together is repair work: bodies rebuilt, confidence rebuilt, careers nudged back onto the road they were supposed to take. Two of the four matches look genuinely open, one looks like a formality that I do not entirely trust, and one is a lopsided price that still has a way of going wrong on clay. Here are the four I want to talk about, in the order they start:

• 08:00 — Burel — Teixido Garcia
• 11:00 — Selekhmeteva — Schunk
• 12:30 — Romero Gormaz — Trevisan
• 14:00 — Fita Boluda — Kabbaj

Times are UTC.

Burel — Teixido Garcia

Clara Burel's story is the most extreme of the day, because she spent a long stretch of it not playing tennis at all. After rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, she had surgery, then a forearm problem pushed the return back again. "I didn't touch a racket for about seven months," she said of that period (Tennis Actu), and she has since spoken about being simply glad to be healthy again. Her clay record this season, 16 wins against 10 losses, is the record of someone rebuilding from the bottom of the ladder rather than defending a place near the top — the ranking of 301 tells the same story.

She arrives busy. A lower-tier clay title, then a run in Montreux that ended in a strange, swinging loss to Guiomar Zuleta de Reales, 3-6 6-1 1-6 — a match in which she looked in charge for a set and then lost the thread entirely. Aran Teixido Garcia has the opposite profile: no tour weight, but two matches already won on these courts, coming from 2-6 down against Tessa Johanna Brockmann and then dismantling Diletta Cherubini 6-4 6-0 without spending much. Her 2025 clay season was excellent, 30-13; this one has drifted to 20-18, and four lost finals with no title say something about closing matches out. They have never met.

The market has Burel at 1.016, which is a strange number for a gap of fewer than fifty ranking places, and the giveaway is the handicap: minus seven games at almost even money. I lean Burel too — she strikes a heavier ball and has won on clay all summer — but the honest version is that this is a first match after a heavy stretch, against someone already sliding comfortably on the surface. I would expect Burel through, and would be slow to assume she wins it cheaply.

Selekhmeteva — Schunk

Two left-handers, two interrupted careers, one meeting already in the books. Nastasja Schunk won it, 7-5 6-4 on clay in the Wiesbaden quarterfinals in May 2022, back when both were teenagers with big futures and no idea what was coming. Schunk lost months to a shoulder injury: "For months I couldn't play tennis at all; I couldn't even lift my arm," she told the German federation (tennis.de). Oksana Selekhmeteva had her own long absence with a left shoulder, and remembers the cost: "I just couldn't believe that it's happening to me because I know through how many moments — injuries, tough moments, moving to Spain when you are fifteen alone," she said of her breakthrough season (WTA).

On ranking this is 101 against 313. On clay this year it is 4-9 for Selekhmeteva and 26-8 for Schunk, and that inversion is the whole match. Selekhmeteva's summer was hard-court work that ended badly at the US Open: a clean win over Aoi Ito, then 3-6 0-6 against Kamilla Rakhimova, a match in which she never once had the rally on her terms. Schunk, meanwhile, has already survived two rounds of qualifying here, the second a taut 7-6(3) 7-5 over Dalila Jakupovic in which neither set was settled until the last games. She knows the bounce; Selekhmeteva does not yet.

Selekhmeteva has more ways to change a rally — the heavy left-handed forehand, the odd two-handed slice she once described as looking like she was carving jamón, and the courage to step in. Schunk's answer is depth and redirection, making Selekhmeteva hit on the move rather than from a set position. Valencia is close to home ground for Selekhmeteva too, since she has trained in Spain since her teens.

Romero Gormaz — Trevisan

The pick of the day, and another all-left-handed contest. Martina Trevisan, 32 now and ranked 314, has won a title in this city before, and she comes back having had surgery on a foot that hurt badly enough to make ordinary mornings unpleasant. "Every day I feel a bit better, and my body is reacting the right way… I don't have that pain that made it hard even to wake up in the morning, to just walk," she said of the recovery (ClayTenis). The results bear it out: 2-7 on clay in 2025 became 22-14 this season. She also added the sentence that explains why she is here at all — "I still love this game and this life… I just have to be patient and work very hard every day."

Her Montreux week was better than the exit suggests: qualifying, then a jagged 7-5 0-6 6-4 over Jennifer Ruggeri, then 2-6 6-4 6-7(4) against Guiomar Zuleta de Reales. The shape of those scorelines is the story — the good Trevisan is still in there, the difficulty is keeping her on court for two hours. Leyre Romero Gormaz, at 145 and 28-16 on clay this year, arrives home from Antalya after saving a marathon against Berfu Cengiz, 6-7(8) 7-5 7-6(6), and then losing the thread against Alevtina Ibragimova, 5-7 1-6, once the first set slipped away. Her coach José Luis Aparisi has described the gift: "Leyre is special… she can play a drop shot, create a little angle, use a high ball, change speeds repeatedly and always add a little magic" (Eurosport).

Magic is lovely until someone leans on it. Trevisan's clay tennis is the opposite — shape, forehand weight, early commitment, and a willingness to defend from two metres behind the baseline until the other player blinks. If Romero lets the rallies settle into repeated cross-court forehand exchanges at a comfortable height, she is playing Trevisan's match. Her route is the short angle, the sudden change of height, the drop shot after she has pushed the Italian deep. There is no head-to-head to lean on, and the Valencia records are thin on both sides: 3-4 here for Romero, 1-1 for Trevisan.

I genuinely do not know. The line agrees — 1.87 against 1.911 is a coin toss with the vig on top — and the thing it hinges on is whether Trevisan's foot and legs still work as well in the second hour as in the first. If she is physically whole, she is the better clay player in this match. If she is not, Romero's variety and the noise of her own city will drag it out. A three-setter would surprise nobody, and the 21.5 total looks likely to be cleared.

Fita Boluda — Kabbaj

Angela Fita Boluda spent years competing through a knee that would not settle, and she sounds relieved rather than triumphant about it now: "Since last year I've finally had this consistency, and I'm happy to have found the path that allows me to stay healthy," she said (Punto de Break). Her US Open qualifying was the proof of the new version: a straight-sets win over Lin Zhu, 6-4 7-6(7), then 4-6 7-5 6-7(5) against Heather Watson, a loss that was a handful of points from being a breakthrough. She is 30-17 on clay this year and playing at home again.

Yasmine Kabbaj, ten years younger at 22, had her own arrival this season in Rabat, where she won at home and then spoke like someone who had learned something: "I managed to control my emotions and handle the match tactically" (CSport). The trouble is what has happened since. Her clay season has slipped to 13-16 after a 35-16 year in 2025, and her last five matches include three losses, including 6-2 4-6 2-6 to Cagla Buyukakcay — a set up, then gone.

The pattern suggests where this goes. Fita will feed height and depth, make the rallies long and unglamorous, and wait for a short ball; Kabbaj needs to take the ball earlier than is comfortable to stop the match becoming a treadmill. If she presses too soon, Fita's court coverage punishes it. No previous meetings between them.

Four repaired careers and one suspicious price

The thread through Tuesday is recovery: Trevisan's foot, Burel's knee, Schunk's shoulder, Fita's knee, and four players finding out whether the work has taken. Romero Gormaz against Trevisan is the one I would not miss — two left-handers with completely different ideas about how clay should be played, and a former champion of this city trying to prove her comeback is now about results. Selekhmeteva against Schunk is the sharpest test of reputation against current form, given that the higher-ranked player has won four clay matches this year to the qualifier's twenty-six.

And Burel at 1.016 against a woman who has already won two matches on these courts is the sort of number that makes me read the draw twice. I am giving leans, not prescriptions; the specific calls on all four of these matches belong to the AI cappers on the match pages, where they have no excuse to be vague.