Two weeks of top-tier tennis at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships concluded on Saturday evening when Ugo Humbert lifted the famous silver dhow trophy as the men’s singles champion.
It was an action-packed fortnight involving plenty of shock results, drama, a likely farewell – and some controversy. Here are the takeaways from the 2024 tournaments.
A year for the underdog
In the first year that the WTA tournament held permanent Masters 1000 status, it was no surprise that the field was its most competitive ever. All of the “Big Four” – Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff, and Elena Rybakina – played in Dubai, as well as eight of the world’s top 10, which would have been nine had Ons Jabeur not withdrawn with injury.
Yet, despite the tournament’s immense strength in depth, it was not one of the tour’s big stars who clinched the title, nor did any of them even reach the final. That was left to be contested by Italy’s Jasmine Paolini – a one-time winner on the WTA Tour – and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, who had to come through qualifying just to reach the main draw.
Kalinskaya was responsible for eliminating half of the Big Four herself, taking out Gauff and Swiatek in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, while Paolini was due to face Rybakina in the last eight only for the Kazakh to retire from the tournament. A hectic schedule that included the title in Abu Dhabi and a final in Doha in successive weeks finally caught up with the world No 4. Sabalenka, meanwhile, suffered a shock exit in the second round.
There may have been an absence of star power in the final, but it was still a riveting match, with Paolini fighting back to seal a 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 victory.
t was a similar scenario at the ATP Tour tournament. Most would have expected a repeat of last year’s final between the top two seeds, Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev, but semi-final exits meant the match was played by Frenchman Humbert and Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik.
Humbert, the fifth seed, ultimately got his hands on the trophy, beating Bublik 6-4, 6-3, to complete an impressive week that included wins over Gael Monfils, Andy Murray, Hubert Hurkacz, and Medvedev.
It made the 2024 Dubai tournament a year for the underdog and demonstrated the strength in depth of both tours.
Rublev’s controversial exit
What a pity for a player who has given so much to this tournament, and received so much in return, for it to end in the way it did. Rublev, the 2022 Dubai champion and finalist last year, was involved in a tightly contested semi-final with Bublik when he was disqualified from the tournament for allegedly using obscene language in an angry tirade at a line umpire.
Rublev tried to plead his case, insisting he was speaking in English and that he did not use any foul language in Russian, as claimed by the line umpire, but the official stuck to his story and the 26-year-old was defaulted from the match.
As a result, second seed Rublev was forced to give up his entire prize money from the tournament as well as any ranking points. He has received plenty of support from fellow players at the severity of the punishment, but that will be scant consolation as Rublev now drops outside the top five in the rankings.
With so much at stake, incidents like this will only increase calls for tennis to introduce its own VAR system. This will allow officials to take an objective view and reach the necessary conclusions once all sides have been assessed, rather than believing one person’s word over the other.
