{"id":484547,"date":"2026-03-19T19:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T19:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/484547\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T19:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T19:50:11","slug":"aryna-sabalenka-threatens-to-boycott-tennis-tournament-after-ridiculous-comment-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/484547\/","title":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka threatens to boycott tennis tournament after ‘ridiculous’ comment made"},"content":{"rendered":"

World No 1 Aryna Sabalenka has warned she may never return to the Dubai Tennis Championships following what she described as “ridiculous” remarks from the tournament’s director.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old’s late withdrawal from the event prompted a furious response from director Salah Tahlak, sparking a war of words between the pair.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka made clear she was deeply unimpressed by his reaction, stating: “I’m not sure if I ever want to go there after his comment. For me it’s too much.”<\/p>\n

The dispute centres on Tahlak’s demand for stricter penalties against players who pull out of tournaments at short notice.<\/p>\n

Tahlak argued that late withdrawals should carry more severe consequences for players than currently exist under tour regulations.<\/p>\n

The tournament director insisted that financial penalties alone were insufficient to address the problem.<\/p>\n

“There should be a harsher punishment on the players,” Tahlak said. <\/p>\n

\"Aryna<\/p>\n

Aryna Sabalebka hit back forcefully at the tournament director’s stance, accusing him of failing to support players<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

“Not just fines, they should be docked ranking points.”<\/p>\n

His proposal would see players lose valuable ranking points in addition to monetary sanctions when they pull out of events at the last minute.<\/p>\n

Such a measure would represent a significant escalation in how tournaments deal with withdrawals, potentially affecting players’ standings and seedings at future competitions.<\/p>\n

\"TennisFive facts for tennis fans | GETTY\/PA<\/p>\n

Sabalenka hit back forcefully at the tournament director’s stance, accusing him of failing to support players.<\/p>\n

“It’s ridiculous. I don’t think he showed himself in the best way possible,” she said.<\/p>\n

The Belarusian expressed disappointment at what she perceives as a lack of concern for athlete welfare from those running events.<\/p>\n

“For me, it’s actually so sad to see that the tournament directors and the tournaments are not protecting us as players,” Sabalenka added.<\/p>\n

She accused organisers of being motivated purely by commercial interests rather than the wellbeing of competitors.<\/p>\n

“They just care about their sales, about their tournament and that’s it. His comment was ridiculous,” she stated.<\/p>\n

\"Aryna<\/p>\n

Aryna Sabalenka is the No 1 women’s player in the world<\/p>\n

| GETTY<\/p>\n

Sabalenka also explained that her withdrawal was part of a deliberate strategy to protect her fitness during an exceptionally demanding period on tour.<\/p>\n

“Going into this season, we decided we were going to prioritise my health and make sure that we have these little gaps in the schedule where I can just reset, recharge, work and be better prepared for bigger tournaments,” she said.<\/p>\n

The world No 1 had also skipped the Qatar Open before claiming victory at Indian Wells last weekend.<\/p>\n

“Scheduling is going crazy and that’s why you see so many players are injured, always taped and not delivering the best quality matches because it’s almost impossible,” Sabalenka added.<\/p>\n

Under WTA regulations, elite players must participate in all four Grand Slams, ten WTA 1000 events and six WTA 500 tournaments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World No 1 Aryna Sabalenka has warned she may never return to the Dubai Tennis Championships following what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[50,2331,217,101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-484547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-news","tag-sgg","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}