Dressed up to attend the players' dinner, Zheng Qinwen welcomes his debut in Dubai tonight!

On February 17, local time, the first round of the women's singles of the 2025 WTA1000 Dubai Station was over, and the second round of competition will be in full swing today. Chinese goldenrod Zheng Qinwen had a first-round bye, and she dressed up for the tournament's players' dinner last night, and she will make her debut tonight against Stearns.

Zheng Qinwen attended the WTA Dubai Players' Dinner

Photo: Visual China

As the No. 7 seed, Zheng Qinwen is in the quarter-finals, along with No. 2 seed Swiatek and No. 12 seed M. Andreeva. It is worth mentioning that Zheng Qinwen's signing is similar to that of Doha, and the first opponent is the winner between Tunisian star Jabbar and another player. In the first round last night, Beijing time, American rising star Stearns played well, beating Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 7-6(6)/6-4 after 1 hour and 56 minutes of fierce battle, and advanced to the second round to challenge Zheng Qinwen.

This is the third consecutive year in Zheng Qinwen's career that she has appeared in the women's singles main draw of the WTA Dubai station. In 2023, Zheng Qinwen defeated Zhang Shuai in the first round, and she retired due to injury before the start of the second round; Last year, Zheng Qinwen broke into the quarterfinals of women's singles, creating the best record of his career in this station. After deducting the 215 ranking points gained last year, Zheng Qinwen is temporarily ranked No. 8 in the immediate rankings, but the gap with the bottom two of Badosa and Navarro has been narrowed to within 300 points, so she urgently needs to earn points at this site to consolidate her leader.

In the latest training session released by the WTA, Zheng Qinwen still wears a protective armband on her right arm, and she has a record of just 1-2 this season due to injury. Zheng has never played against Stearns in her career, and she currently has a 23-10 record against the American. This game will start at 22:30 Beijing time tonight on the Center Court, let's cheer for Zheng Qinwen together!

Azarenka

Photo: Visual China

Yesterday's first-round match was full of upsets. Last week's WTA Women's Singles champion Anisimova in Doha was eliminated in straight sets by Kessler, 2-6, 3-6; Women's Singles runner-up Ostapenko lost her first match 3-6, 3-6 to Moe Natsu Uchijima. 10th seed Kasatkina lost 1-6, 4-6 to wildcard Romania's Kostya, while 13th seed Maia lost 3-6, 0-6 to Potapova and also missed out on the second round.

Other results:

[11] Schneider 6-2/6-2 Freich

[12] M. Andreyeva 6-2, 6-1 Avanesyan

Azarenka 2-6, 7-6(4), 6-4 Karenina

Towson 7-6(7)/6-0 Schramkova

Kostyuk 6-3, 6-4 Sniakova[Q]

[Q] V. Kudermetova 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 Aleksandeva

Leith 5-7/7-5/6-3 Begu[Q]

In Women's Doubles, China's Xu Yifan/Yang Zhaoxuan needed just 43 minutes to beat Jiang Xinyu/Wu Fangxian, who finished runners-up at the WTA Doha last week, 6-0, 6-0 to advance to the second round. Wang Xinyu/Zheng Saisai lost 3-6, 4-6 to Noskova/Putintseva to make it three straight doubles defeats since the WTA Singapore final.