Meet Ella Seidel who will face Aryna Sabalenka on Day One of 2024 Australian Open

Ella Seidel will play her first-round match at the Australian Open 2024 against defending champion Aryna Sabalenka, seeded number two. The match will be played in the night event at the Rod Laver Arena (8:00 GMT).

In order to be able to take part in this prestigious tournament, Seidel had played her way through qualifying. For the Hamburg-born player, this means that she will be playing her first Grand Slam tournament. In the course of her first Grand Slam qualifying round, she defeated Elizabeth Mandlik 6:3; 2:6 and 6:4 in her first match, and in the second match she downed Francesca Jones from Great Britain, as the British player had given up the match at 6:3; 4:4 due to cramps. Ella Seidel successfully played her last qualifying match against Hailey Baptiste, who she swept off the court 6:0; 6:4.

"I play tennis because it's a lot of fun and because I want to. That's what I decided to do. I'm happy every day when I go out on the court and can play matches," she told the city magazine Szene Hamburg at the age of 15, and she once confidently told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper "because it appealed to me to be alone on the court, where there is only winning or losing."

She started playing field hockey at the tender age of six, as 'tennis Magazin' reports, but her focus was more on tennis. Her great role model is Simona Halep, whose great fighting spirit she greatly admires. She became German junior champion twice (2019 U-14; 2021 U-16) and finally German women's champion in 2022. Internationally, Ella Seidel reached 19th place in the ITF junior rankings in 2022, securing seven ITF junior singles titles and competing in the four junior Grand Slam tournaments. In 2023, she reached the last 16 of the Australian Open (juniors) but was eliminated.

In 2023, Seidel also played at lower-ranked WTA tournaments alongside various ITF events, won a total of 50 matches and won titles in Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Braunschweig and Bratislava - three of the five finals she reached. Thanks to a wildcard, she made her debut at a major tournament, the WTA 250 tournament in Hamburg, where she was defeated 6:7, 6:1, 3:6 by Jule Niemeier in round one. Ella Seidel is now ranked 172 in the WTA rankings, which is the best ranking of her career to date.