{"id":472821,"date":"2026-02-13T17:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472821\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T17:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:41:10","slug":"sabalenka-swiatek-withdraw-from-dubai-draw-tennis-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472821\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabalenka, Swiatek Withdraw from Dubai Draw \u2013 Tennis Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s top two players will not be in attendance at next week\u2019s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.<\/p>\n

Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek announced the news on Friday.<\/p>\n

\"tennis<\/a>tennis express pro player gear<\/p>\n

Sabalenka ends a run of nine consecutive appearances in Dubai.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really sorry I have to withdraw from Dubai. I have such a special connection with the tournament, the fans and the city. Unfortunately, I am not feeling 100 per cent. But I hope to be back next year and wish the tournament a great event,\u201d the four-time major champion said.<\/p>\n

Swiatek, a runner up in Dubai in 2023, said:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI am sorry to announce that I will not be playing Dubai this year due to a change of schedule. I hope I will come back next year to experience the great tournament. See you guys in Indian Wells.\u201d<\/p>\n

While at the Australian Open, Swiatek talked about the fact that she planned to play less 1000 events in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year I had trouble with making this kind of decision, but this year I\u2019m trying to change my approach. So I think, for sure, we\u2019ll skip some 1000 tournaments,\u201d Swiatek said.<\/p>\n

Dubai is not a \u201cmandatory\u201d 1000-level event. For race purposes, players can count their best event from Doha, Dubai or Wuhan.<\/p>\n

The field will be stacked in Dubai nevertheless. Last week the tournament said in a press release that \u201cthe world\u2019s top 20 women \u2013 including all eight quarterfinalists from the season\u2019s first Grand Slam \u2013 are confirmed for Dubai\u2019s WTA 1000 event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two marquee names will be missing but the show goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s top two players will not be in attendance at next week\u2019s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-472821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}