The 14th Mubadala World Tennis Championship (MWTC) gets underway on Friday at the International Tennis Centre, Zayed Sports City, Abu Dhabi, with the likes of defending champion Andrey Rublev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Ons Jabeur competing.
Tsitsipas, a fan favourite, will face Cameron Norrie
the No. 1 male tennis player in Britain, in the opening match (4 p.m.). During his 2019 debut in Abu Dhabi, Tsitsipas, a finalist for the French Open in 2021, delighted fans. When he rose to World No. 3 on the ATP rankings in August 2021, the same year he reached his first Grand Slam final at the French Open, he became the highest-ranked Greek player in history. In 2019, 2021, and earlier this year, he reached the semifinals of the Australian Open three times.
Norrie will be competing in his first tournament. Since October 2021
The 27-year-old has topped the men’s singles rankings in Great Britain and reached a career high at No. 8 ranking this summer, joining Greg Rusedski, Tim Henman, and Andy Murray as the only men in British history to reach the top 10 in the world.
Rublev, the current champion, will face Borna Coric
A Croatian who is also making his debut in MWTC after American Frances Tiafoe was forced to withdraw due to injury, in the second match (6pm).
By defeating Andy Murray in straight sets in December, the 24-year-old Rublev won his first MWTC title, setting a career high ranking of No. 5. So far, Rublev has won 11 singles titles and 3 doubles titles on the ATP Tour. He and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, a native of Russia, won the mixed doubles gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He has reached the quarterfinals of five Grand Slam tournaments, including the French and US Opens this year.
Coric, a 26-year-old who won the Cincinnati Masters in August by defeating fellow MWTC contenders Norrie and Tsitsipas, will be hoping to surprise Rublev as well.
I can’t wait to compete in my first Mubadala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi. It will be great to play in front of a lot of Croatian sports fans, as I know there are many of them in the area. Coric stated, “The perfect start to my 2023 season is playing in the Championship with such a strong lineup.”
Ons Jabeur, the World No. 2 and two-time 2022 Grand Slam finalist, will compete against Emma Raducanu, the British No. 1 and 2021 US Open Champion, in the women’s match at 8 p.m.
On the second day of the tournament
World No. No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz 3 Casper Ruud taking on the team that won Friday’s match.In front of the competition, the players participated in a crossbar challenge. The seven players were each given five chances to hit the crossbar with a tennis ball using only their racquets with their football goal post target 20 metres away.
After that, they were asked to try and hit a football against the crossbar to switch sports. Borna Coric won the match after hitting the crossbar twice with a tennis ball and Stefanos Tsitispas was the only player to hit the target with a football, despite a few close calls, unexpected goals, and questionable decisions