This week, Hingis will play her first grasscourt match since falling to Jelena Dokic of Australia in the first round of Wimbledon last year. At the time, Hingis was coming off an emotional French Open final loss to Steffi Graf and was in the midst of a brief seperation from her coach and mother, Melanie Molitor.

Hingis has regrouped since then, but was a semifinal loser to eventual champion Mary Pierce at this year's French Open. She has one grasscourt title, winning Wimbledon in 1997.

Second seed Sandrine Testud is here to make her preparations for Wimbledon, the year's third Grand Slam which begins on June 26. Testud lost three of five matches on grass last season, including her only encounter here.

Hingis and Testud received first-round byes.

No. 3 Jennifer Capriati was one of three seeded players in action today. She eliminated Magdalena Malevva with an easy 6-3, 6-1 victory.

Capriati snapped a four-match losing streak last week at the DFS Classic in Birmingham, England and reached the quarterfinals before falling to eventual winner Lisa Raymond in three sets.

With the help of renowned coach Harold Solomon, Capriati last season rejuvenated a once-promising career that had been sidetracked by off-the-court problems in the mid 1990s. She won two titles in 1999 and started this season by reaching the Australian Open semifinals. However, since recently splitting with Solomon, Capriati has looked out of shape and had not played well until last week.

Dokic, seeded sixth, got past two-time finalist Miriam Oremans, 6-4, 6-3.

Last year, the Australian teen built on her victory over Hingis at Wimbledon and reached the quarterfinals. But Dokic's rise has slowed a bit this year as she has gone through coaches and courted controversy at the Australian Open when she insulted the woman who ousted her from the first round and said the draw was fixed.

Former champion Ruxandra Dragomir of Romania advanced with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 triumph over Nadejda Petrova of Russia today. Dragomir won her fourth and last title here in 1997, beating Oremans in the final.

On the men's side, second seed Nicolas Escude of France cruised into the second round with a 6-1, 6-2 win over John van Lottum of the Netherlands. Escude reached the fourth round of last week's Gerry Weber Open in Halle, Germany.

Lleyton Hewitt of Australia is the top seed. Hewitt claimed his first grasscourt title, fourth tournament victory of the season and sixth in his short career on Sunday, beating six-time Wimbledon champion Pete Sampras in the final of the Stella Artois Championships.

The 19-year-old Hewitt also has captured titles this season in his homeland at Adelaide and Sydney, as well as Scottsdale, Arizona, and is 41-8 overall in 2000.

In the first round on Tuesday, Hewitt plays Magnus Gustafsson of Sweden.

Second seed Patrick Rafter of Australia won one tournament during his injury-plagued 1999 campaign, winning his second straight Heineken Open title here. Rafter is attempting to become the first player ever to win three crowns at this event.

Rafter's win here last year, along with a semifinal run at Wimbledon, helped lift him to the world No. 1 ranking, but two months later he suffered a shoulder injury during the first round of the U.S. Open. He underwent arthroscopic surgery in October to repair a tear in his right shoulder.

The return to form has been slow for the two-time U.S. Open champion. After reaching the quarterfinals in his first event in February in Delray Beach, Rafter has yet to get past the third round in a tournament. He will battle Dutch qualifier Denis Van Scheppingen in the first round.

Andrei Pavel of Romania is seeded fourth, followed by American Michael Chang, Karim Alami of Morocco, two-time winner Richard Krajicek of the Netherlands, and Francisco Clavet of Spain.

Completing the top eight women's seeds are Barbara Schett of Austria, Kim Clijsters of Belgium, Sabine Appelmans of Belgium, and defending champion Kristina Brandi of the United States.

Eleven matches between unseeded players are on today's schedule -- seven on the men's side and four on the women's.

The men's winner takes home $54,000 while the women's victor earns $27,000.