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World No. 3 Karolina Pliskova, of the Czech Republic, will be one of the star attractions at the upcoming WTA Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of Dubai Duty Free, commented on the former World No.
1, "Karolina Pliskova has been ranked as the very best player in the world and since May of last year she has not been ranked outside of the top three, a tremendous achievement. She has a fine record at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, reaching the final in 2015, and she clearly has an excellent chance of being even more successful this year." Pliskova has started 2020 in great fashion - she won the WTA event in Brisbane - her third title at the tournament in the past four years - before going down in the third round of the Australian Open in Melbourne to Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
In last year's Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Pliskova lost in the quarter-finals after leading 5-1 in the final set against Su-Wei Hsieh while she lost in the quarter-finals in 2018 to Angelique Kerber. Prior to that, she suffered back-to-back first round exits - in 2017, she was beaten in the first round by Kristina Mladenovic and in 2016 - she was beaten by American Coco Vandeweghe.
Although US Open champion Bianca Andreescu has withdrawn from the tournament, the WTA event in Dubai still has a very strong field with six Top 10 players entered - including No. 2 Simona Halep, No. 4 Elina Svitolina, No. 5 Belinda Bencic, Australian Open champion and No.
7 Sofia Kenin and No. 8 Kiki Bertens. The tournament will also mark the comeback of former World No. 1 Kim Clijsters, who has accepted a wildcard and will be playing her first WTA event in more than seven years.