The Qatar Open will be the first WTA 1000 event of the season, but several big-name players will be absent from the tournament.
The Middle East swing kicked off with this week’s Abu Dhabi Open, but the biggest names on the WTA Tour have skipped the event as they opted to take a longer break after the Australian Open with world No 9 Belinda Bencic the highest-ranked player in the main draw.
Instead, most stars will return to action in Doha – which runs from February 8-12 at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex – although a few players have already pulled out.
Former world No 1 and four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka won’t feature as she remains sidelined with the injury that forced her to withdraw from the Australian Open.
At the time, Osaka didn’t reveal much about the injury only stating “I’ve had to make the difficult decision to withdraw to address something my body needs attention for after my last match”.
But organisers of the Abu Dhabi event have revealed she withdrew due to an abdominal injury.
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Fellow major champion Madison Keys is also out, but no reason was given for the 2025 Australian Open champion’s decision to pull out of the WTA 1000 tournament.
Keys’ withdrawal comes on the back of her fourth-round exit at Melbourne Park when she was beaten by fellow American Jessica Pegula.
And Pegula, who was due to be seeded sixth, is another player who won’t play in Abu Dhabi with the 31-year-old likely skipping the event to take an extended breather after reachign the semi-final in Australia.
American teenager Iva Jovic was one of the stars of the hard-court Grand Slam as the 18-year-old stunned seventh seed Jasmine Paolini en route to the quarter-final before losing against Aryna Sabalenka.
She has surged to No 20 in the WTA Rankings, but she won’t play in Doha along with Marta Kostyuk, who sustained a serious ankle injury during her first-round loss in Melbourne, and Eva Lys.
Katerina Siniakova, Laura Siegemund, Marie Bouzkova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Wang Xinyu and Daria Kasatkina have all earned direct entries into the main draw on the back of the withdrawals.
Amanda Anisimova is the defending champion and she is set to be seeded fourth for her title defence with world No 1 Sabalenka the top seed and Iga Swiatek, Australian Open champion and Coco Gauff completing the top five.
Sabalenka (2020) and Swiatek (2022, 2023, 2024) are the only other former champions in the draw.
AloJapan.com