When a stop in Hawaii appeared on the Women’s Tennis Association schedule, Fanni Stollar knew where she’d be spending Thanksgiving week.

“Oh I really wanted to come,” said Stollar, an 18-year-old from Hungary. “This was a priority.”

The inaugural Hawaii Tennis Open, the first WTA event to be held in Hawaii, opened with four qualifying matches at Central Oahu Regional Parkon Sunday and the main draw will feature day and night sessions today through Wednesday. Today’s sessions start at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

There will be a day session only on Thanksgiving and the doubles final is set for Friday at 6 p.m. The singles semifinals start at noon on Saturday with the final set for 1 p.m. on Sunday.

The 32-player singles draw field is headed by top-seeded Shuai Zhang, the top-ranked player in China and 23rd in the world. Zhang is closing out a year that began with a run to the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and two International Tennis Federation tournament wins.

American Nicole Gibbs, the second seed, owns the next highest ranking at No. 76. Maria Sakkari of Greece is the third seed and 17-year-old Cici Bellis, who made a run to the third round of the U.S. Open, is part of the tournament’s teen-aged contingent as the fourth seed.

Sabine Lisicki of Germany, a 2013 Wimbledon finalist and winner of four WTA events, is seeded fifth and enters the tournament ranked 91st in the world. She reached the Wimbledon final three years ago with wins over Serena Williams in the fourth round and Agnieszka Radwanska in the semifinals before falling to Marion Bartoli. She also owns the WTA record for fastest serve at 131 mph in 2014.

Stollar will open the tournament against 17-year-old and fellow first-year pro Katie Swan of England, a wild-card entrant who made her Wimbledon debut this summer.

“I got a wild card in so I’m really honored to be here with so many amazing players and in such a nice place,” Swan said.

“I think Hawaii’s a great place, especially at the end of the year when everybody’s pretty tired. It’s a nice place to come to. its quite relaxing even during the tournament.”

The tournament’s move from to Hawaii from Carlsbad, Calif., is part of the sudden surge in professional tennis in the state. Kailua-Kona played host to the first Fed Cup tie to be held in Hawaii last February with the U.S. sweeping Poland. The event was so well received, the USTA awarded a Fed Cup meeting with Germany to the Royal Lahaina Resort in February.

“We think this will be a growth opportunity for us. We’re 100 percent we’ll be back for Year 2,” tournament director Ben Goldsmith said as he hustled around CORP making final preparations.

“It’s smaller than a lot of tournaments, but it’s bigger than Hawaii’s had and we plan on growing it. It has to be a slow growth thing, you can’t just start huge on these tournaments … but we think the community’s starting to get behind us and starting to see the vision.

“We were short on volunteers until a week ago and in the last week we’ve had over 200 come out. … They’ve been amazing.”