Next year's Dubai Championships promises to be another memorable event after Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek were confirmed for the WTA 1000 tournament.
The 2025 Dubai Championships is set to be particularly special because it will mark 25 years since the first iteration of the women's singles. There has been a men's singles event since 1993.
Martina Hingis, who will compete against Kim Clijsters in an exhibition event next year in Dallas, won the first edition in 2001. The Swiss tennis legend overcame Nathalie Tauziat in the final.
Several other high-profile WTA players have triumphed in Dubai, including Venus Williams, Lindsay Davenport, Garbine Muguruza, Caroline Wozniacki, Petra Kvitova, and Simona Halep.
Last year's Dubai Championships featured one of the most surprising runs of the season. Jasmine Paolini stormed to her first WTA 1000 title, establishing her near the top of women's tennis. The Italian beat Anna Kalinskaya in a thrilling final.
Paolini went on to reach the French Open and Wimbledon finals, secure an Olympic gold medal with Sara Errani in the women's doubles, and win the Billie Jean King Cup Finals with Italy during an incredible breakthrough 2024 season.
Unsurprisingly, Paolini is scheduled to return to the tournament where she has so many happy memories. She will defend a massive 1000 points at the event, which begins on February 16th.
Sabalenka will hope to do better than this year when she returns to the Dubai Championships. This year's Australian Open and US Open champion lost to Olympic silver medalist Donna Vekic in the second round.
The Belarusian, who won the 2024 WTA Player of the Year after her outstanding season, briefly lost momentum after claiming a second Australian Open title but has probably learned from that experience.
Sabalenka has never won the Dubai Championships. The same can also be said of Iga Swiatek. She reached this year's semifinal and the 2024 final in Dubai but could not win a maiden title at the event.
The conditions at the Dubai Championships are usually among the fastest on the WTA Tour. That does not suit Swiatek's game, meaning those runs in Dubai in the last two years deserve credit.
How Swiatek performs at the tournament in 2025 might depend on her opening month of the season. Tennis fans were shocked to discover that the Pole accepted a one-month ban after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine.
Swiatek is already cleared to return, but the start of 2025 will indicate whether she has put the incident behind her. The world No. 2 admitted to being horrified by how some reacted to her doping case becoming public on November 28th.
This year's Wimbledon champion, Barbora Krejcikova, will also feature in the 25th anniversary of the WTA Dubai Championships. The Czech defeated Swiatek in the 2023 final to seal her sole WTA 1000 title in singles.
Former world No. 3 and 2024 US Open runner-up Jessica Pegula has also committed to competing at the Dubai Championships. Olympic gold medalist in the women's singles and WTA Finals runner-up, Qinwen Zheng, will also play at the event.
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