The tenth edition of the Mubadala exhibition tournament will raise the curtain tomorrow in Abu Dhabi, with the Serbian Novak Djokovic as the main favorite after the loss of the Spanish Rafa Nadal, world number one, and with a women’s match as a great novelty for the first time.
The American Serena Williams, who will return to the slopes four months after her motherhood, and the Latvian Jelena Ostapenko, winner of the last Roland Garros, will be the protagonists of the same, in an unprecedented duel that will take place on Saturday 30, the last day of competition .
The tournament, which offers $ 250,000 to the winner, will host three days of competition, from Thursday to Saturday, at the International Center for Tennis from Abu Dhabi, which hopes to fill its 5,000 seats as a preamble to the first Grand Slam of the season, days later in Australia.
The loss of Nadal will not prevent two Spaniards from competing from tomorrow. The Mallorcan’s vacancy will be filled by Roberto Bautista, who will join Pablo Carreño, tenth in the world ranking and debutant in Abu Dhabi to play the opening match tomorrow against South African Kevin Anderson (14).
The match between Carreño and Anderson will reissue the semifinal of the United States Open, resolved in favor of the second despite the great 2017 of the Asturian, which includes the quarterfinals of Roland Garros and the titles of Estoril and Rio.
Bautista, who also makes his Abu Dhabi debut, has finished in the top 25 in the world in the past four seasons and is the winner of two ATP titles in 2017 (Winston-Salem and Chennai).
His rival will be the Russian Andrey Rublev (39), also a rookie in this event, in which he appears as the youngest quarter-finalist in the history of the United States Open since 2001 at the age of 20.
The winner of the Carreño-Anderson duel will face Austrian Dominic Thiem on Friday 29, the Spaniard’s executioner in the group stage of this year’s London Masters tournament, in which he reached the semi-finals at Roland Garros and finished sixth in the world.
The other match on the 29th will be played by Bautista or Rublev against Serbian Novak Djokovic in his fifth appearance in Abu Dhabi and after a year marked by an elbow injury.
The winners of both matches will play the final on December 30, which will be preceded by the third-place match and the only women’s match with Serena Williams and Jelena Ostapenko.
72 titles, 36 years and 319 weeks as world number one are part of the figures that adorn the return to the slopes of Serena Williams, who arrives in Abu Dhabi with her mind set on Australia and ready to regain her hegemony with a victory over Ostapenko, winner of two titles in 2017, including Roland Garros, the first Grand Slam of her career. EFE