World number three Elina Svitolina will join Grand Slam winning stars Venus Williams and Justine Henin as the only back-to-back champion in Dubai if she defends her title in the desert this week.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Ukrainian takes the top seeding at the tournament which will be missing top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki and Simona Halep as well as Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova who opted not to play despite the offer of wildcard.<\/p>\n
Twelve months ago, Svitolina\u2019s title win in Dubai allowed her to break into the top 10 for the first time.<\/p>\n
However, she returns to the UAE having lost in the second round to Petra Kvitova in neighbouring Doha this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ranking is just a number that confirms that you are doing something well for the last year, for the last one-and-a-half years,\u201d said Svitolina who beat Wozniacki in last year\u2019s Dubai final.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt brings me confidence, first of all, because I had a great year in 2017.\u201d<\/p>\n
After winning in Dubai 12 months ago, Svitolina went onto clinch three more titles in 2017.<\/p>\n
She began 2018 by lifting the Brisbane trophy before reaching the Australian Open quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have bigger goals, trying to work on everything and just move forward, just one step at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Svitolina has a bye in the first round in Dubai before starting her campaign against either a qualifier or big-hitting Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Wimbledon champion Garbine Muguruza, who was to play in the Doha final on Sunday, takes the second seeding, with the Spaniard playing the event for a fourth consecutive year.<\/p>\n
Muguruza begins in the second round against either Catherine Bellis of the United States or Belgium\u2019s Elise Mertens, an Australian Open semi-finalist.<\/p>\n
Karolina Pliskova is seeded third, with the Czech beginning with a match against a qualifier or Spain\u2019s durable Carla Suarez Navarro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World number three Elina Svitolina will join Grand Slam winning stars Venus Williams and Justine Henin as the only back-to-back champion in Dubai if she defends her title in the desert this week. The 23-year-old Ukrainian takes the top seeding at the tournament which will be missing top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki and Simona Halep as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22347,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22345\/revisions\/22347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}