Editor's note: This story was written prior to Jack Draper's withdrawal from the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.
It could be a big week in the Middle East for the Lexus ATP Head2Head rivalry between Andrey Rublev and Jack Draper.
The pair, which met on Saturday evening in Doha for the championship match at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open, has also been placed in the same quarter of the draw at next week’s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. The third-seeded Rublev, who triumphed in Doha, and seventh-seeded Draper will face off in the quarter-finals at the hard-court ATP 500 in the U.A.E. should they both reach that stage. They will each open their respective Dubai campaigns against a qualifier.
As well as Rublev and Draper, Alex de Minaur and Arthur Fils are the other seeded players in the bottom half of the Dubai draw. Second seed De Minaur will chase his maiden Dubai match win at the third attempt in his opener against Marin Cilic, while the eighth-seeded Fils starts against Nuno Borges.
The top seed in Dubai is Daniil Medvedev. The No. 6 in the PIF ATP Rankings and 2023 champion will open his latest bid to win the same tournament twice for the first time against Jan-Lennard Struff. The big-serving Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, who faces Zhang Zhizhen, is a potential second-round opponent for Medvedev, while defending champion Ugo Humbert is seeded to face Medvedev in the quarter-finals.
Arguably the standout first-round clash in Dubai is a meeting between two former Top 10 stars, Matteo Berrettini and Gael Monfils. Berrettini has won all three of their previous tour-level meetings, although the pair has not played since the 2022 Australian Open.
Stefanos Tsitsipas and Grigor Dimitrov will both be aiming to bounce back quickly from first-round exits in Doha, and they join Berrettini and Monfils in the second quarter of the draw. The fourth-seeded Tsitsipas will seek a strong showing against Lorenzo Sonego in his opener, while Dimitrov would play the winner of Berrettini or Monfils if he can overcome a qualifier first up.
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