The Mubadala World Tennis Championship returns to the International Tennis Centre, Zayed Sports City, Abu Dhabi, on 16-18 December 2021. Get your Mubadala tennis tickets and watch eight of the tennis world’s brightest stars battle it out for the MWTC title.
There will be six matches in all. One of the matches will be between the two female players, while the other matches will be among the male players.
Please note that the Mubadala tennis schedule and player line-up might change at the last minute and without prior notice.
The Women
The two female players are Emma Raducanu and Belinda Bencic. They will go head-to-head at 8 pm on the 16th.
Emma Raducanu
Emma Raducanu is an 18-year-old player from Great Britain. Globally, she is currently ranked 19th by the Women’s Tennis Association, while she is ranked first in Great Britain. She is also one of the world’s top-grossing female tennis players.
The following are some of her significant achievements.
- She won the 2021 US Open title. She rose from rank 150 to rank 22 after her victory.
- She’s the first player not to drop a single set in her US Open women’s singles title bid since Serena Williams in 2014.
- She won the 2021 US Open title. She rose from rank 150 to rank 22 after her victory.
- She’s the first from Great Britain to win a Grand Slam singles title since Virginia Wade in 1977.
- She’s the first from Great Britain to win at Flushing Meadows since Virginia Wade in 1968.
- She’s the youngest to win the Grand Slam since Maria Sharapova in 2004.
Update: As of posting, Raducanu is out of the exhibition event after testing positive for COVID-19. Another top female competitor is set to replace her in the meantime.Â
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Belinda Bencic
Belinda Bencic, currently ranked 23rd among all female tennis players in the world and an Olympic gold medalist, is a 24-year-old player from Switzerland. The following are some of her most notable achievements.
- She won gold in tennis singles and silver in tennis doubles in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
- She was the youngest to be included in the WTA Top 10 in 2016.
- She has won two doubles titles on the WTA Tour.
- In juniors in 2013, she became ITF Junior World Champion. In the same year, she won Roland Garros and Wimbledon girls’ singles.
- In 2015, she won the Canadian Open (i.e., Rogers Cup).
The Men
Six male players will be featured: Rafael Nadal, Andrey Rublev, Casper Ruud, Dennis Shapovalov, Dominic Thiem, and Andy Murray.
Ruud and Shapovalov will have a match on the 16th, followed by a match between Thiem and Murray. The following day, the winner of the Ruud-Shapovalov match will face Rublev, and the victor in the Thiem-Murray contest will battle Nadal. The Men’s Final will take place on the 18th, and it will be between whoever won the Rublev and Nadal matches.
Rafael Nadal
Who doesn’t know Rafael Nadal? Ranked sixth in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals, this 35-year-old tennis player from Spain is a 20-time Grand Slam champion, a distinction he shares with Roger Federer and currently top-ranked male tennis player Novak Djokovic.
Here are some of his most remarkable feats in the world of tennis.
- He has 20 Grand Slams.
- He has 13 Roland Garros victories.
- He has 88 ATP Tour singles titles, 66 of which he won on clay.
- He has won at least one ATP Tour singles title since 2004, which means an unbroken record-breaking streak of 18 years.
- He won the 2008 Beijing Games. So far, he and Andre Agassi are the only players with a career Grand Slam and a gold medal in tennis singles.
Andrey Rublev
Andrey Rublev is a 24-year-old player from Russia and is currently ranked fifth globally. The following are some of his achievements.
- He won gold in mixed doubles at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
- His meteoric rise in rankings started pretty recently. He debuted into the ATP Top 20 in January 2020 then subsequently made it to the Top 10 in October. Now, he’s fifth in the world.
- He contributed to Russia’s victory in the 2021 ATP Cup.
- He defeated Daniil Medvedev, the world’s second-ranked tennis player, at 2021 Cincinnati.
Casper Ruud
Casper Ruud is a 22-year-old Norwegian ranked eighth in the world. Here are a few of his most remarkable achievements.
- He is the top-ranked player in Norway.
- He advanced to Grand Slam 4R in the 2021 Australian Open.
- With Kitzbuhel, Bastad, and Gstaad, he became the first player to win three titles in three consecutive weeks since Andy Murray in 2011.
- He attained ATP Masters 1000 semi-finals in Rome (2020), Monte Carlo (2021), and Madrid (2021).
Denis Shapovalov
Denis Shapovalov, or “Shapo,” is a 22-year-old Canadian currently ranked 14th in the world by the ATP. These are some of his achievements.
- He had his first Grand Slam semi-final at Wimbledon this 2021, where he defeated Andy Murray.
- He is only the second Canadian, so far, to debut in the ATP Top 10.
- He is the only Canadian, so far, to compete in the quarter-finals of the 2020 US Open.
- He was a finalist in 2019 Paris.
- He was a semi-finalist in 2017 Montreal, where, at age 18, he defeated Rafael Nadal.
- In juniors, he won the Wimbledon boys’ singles title in 2016.
Dominic Thiem
Ranked 15th in the world, Dominic Thiem is a 28-year-old player from Austria. He has the following distinctions under his belt.
- He outplayed Alexander Zverev (currently third in the world) in his fourth Grand Slam final and won the 2020 US Open Title.
- He is the first Austrian ever to win the US Open singles.
- He ranked third in the world in 2020.
- He has stayed in the ATP Top 10 since 2016.
- He has beaten the world’s top players to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals:
- Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in 2019, and Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in 2020.
- He defeated Federer in the 2019 Indian Wells to win the title.Andy Murray
Andy Murray
is a 34-year-old British player who is currently ranked 134th globally. Among his most significant achievements are the following.
- He won a Grand Slam, a Masters 1000 title, an Olympic gold medal, and the year-end ATP Tour finals, all in 2016. He is, so far, the only male player to have achieved all four of these distinctions in one year.
- He has three Grand Slams: two Wimbledons (2013 and 2016) and one US Open (2012).
- He is the only tennis player, so far, who has won two Olympic Gold medals in tennis singles: London in 2012 and Rio in 2016.
- He won silver in mixed doubles at the London Olympics in 2012.
- He is the first from Great Britain to win a Grand Slam title since Fred Perry in 1936.
- He was the top-ranked British player in 2016 and is currently ranked fifth in Great Britain.
Ready for Some World-Class Tennis?
If you’re ready to watch all eight tennis greats in this annual championship, buy your Mubadala tickets soon. They should be running out fast.
Aside from the matches, there will be tennis clinics, player interactions, family activities, food trucks, and other entertainment. Learn the highlights by checking out the Mubadala tennis schedule 2021.
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