{"id":491899,"date":"2026-02-22T11:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T11:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/491899\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T11:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T11:13:12","slug":"dubai-tennis-championships-lebanons-benjamin-hassan-drawn-against-stan-wawrinka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/491899\/","title":{"rendered":"Dubai Tennis Championships: Lebanon’s Benjamin Hassan drawn against Stan Wawrinka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian top-seed Felix Auger-Aliassime will begin his quest for Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships glory against China’s Zhizhen Zhang following Saturday’s draw.<\/p>\n

The 34th edition of the annual ATP event, which takes place from February 23 to 28, features eight of the world\u2019s top-ranked male players, including five former winners. <\/p>\n

With five former champions and three beaten finalists among the 32-man field, Saturday’s draw for the ATP500 event served up several eye-catching matches. <\/p>\n

Unseeded former champions Ugo Humbert and Stefanos Tsitsipas \u2013 Dubai winners in 2024 and 2025, respectively \u2013 will go head-to-head on Monday. Lebanon’s Benjamin Hassan, the World No 287, will face Stan Wawrinka \u2013 champion in Dubai a decade ago \u2013 as the legendary Swiss embarks on his final ATP season. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tough one; he\u2019s a Grand Slam champion so I have nothing to lose,\u201d said Hassan, who made history at the 2024 Paris Olympics<\/a> as the first Lebanese representative in men’s singles tennis. Hassan also made his Grand Slam main draw debut at last year\u2019s French Open, becoming the first Lebanese player to qualify for Roland Garros in the Open Era. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to play freely,\u201d added the 31-year-old. \u201cHe\u2019s the older generation in his last season, but I know he can still play, and move, very well. On top of that, he has the experience and knows what he\u2019s doing, so I\u2019ll need to fight and find ways to keep up with him. The biggest thing is probably the motivational part, that I have fun playing him, that I want to win, give it my all, and fight until I die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third-seed Daniil Medvedev, the 2023 winner, faces China\u2019s Juncheng Shang; fifth seed and 2022 champion Andrey Rublev is up against France\u2019s Valentin Royer; sixth seed and World No 16 Jakub Mensik was drawn against Poland\u2019s Hubert Hurkacz; eighth seed Jiri Lehecka meets France\u2019s Arthur Fils; and Rinderknech takes on Hungary\u2019s Fabian Marozsan.<\/p>\n

Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan will have to wait slightly longer to discover his opponent after drawing a qualifier. Britain\u2019s Jack Draper, the fourth seed, and Karen Khachanov, the seventh seed, will also play qualifiers in round one.<\/p>\n

Jessica Pegula crowned champion in Dubai – in pictures<\/p>\n

Following Saturday’s draw, Ramesh Cidambi, managing director, Dubai Duty Free and chair of the Tournament Organising Committee, said: \u201cAfter an amazingly successful WTA 1000 week<\/a> where we saw a 44 per cent year-on-year increase at the Box Office, and 48% year-on-year jump in overall ticket sales, we look forward to carrying that momentum into ATP week. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled that the response to our enhanced facilities \u2013 including the New Court 1 and expanded Fan Village \u2013 have been so universally positive. Best of luck to all the players this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salah Tahlak, deputy managing director, Dubai Duty Free, and tournament director of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, announced the three wildcards during the draw, with Hassan and Wawrinka joined by Tunisia\u2019s Moez Echargui, the World No 139. With Hassan and Echargui in the field, Tahlak said he hopes that the pair serve as \u201cinspiration to kids across the Arab world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadian top-seed Felix Auger-Aliassime will begin his quest for Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships glory against China’s Zhizhen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,32109,31127,82,2225,1320,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-491899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-dubai","11":"tag-sport-team","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-standard","14":"tag-story","15":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491899","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=491899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}