DUBAI // Samantha Stosur, the 2011 US Open champion, is hoping to improve on her modest record at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships this week, but she concedes it will not be easy given the quality of the field here.
Fifteen of the world’s top 20 women will be in action at the Aviation Club this week, with some exciting first-round duels on the cards when the tournament begins on Monday.
Former world No 1 Caroline Wozniacki, winner here in 2011, will start her campaign against world No 15 Sabine Lisicki, the losing finalist at Wimbledon last year. Ana Ivanovic, another former No 1, will clash with world No 9 Angelique Kerber to set up a potential second-round match against wild-card Venus Williams, who opens against Elena Vesnina.
American youngster Sloane Stephens will start against the Czech Republic’s Lucie Safarova, who reached the quarter-finals at the Australian Open last month.
“This tournament is always very well supported by all the top players, so it’s tough to win,” said Stosur, a three-time quarter-finalist here, who will meet a qualifier in the first round. “It’s like playing somewhere from the fourth round onwards in a grand slam.
“I guess everyone is trying to get through and play as best as they can right from the first round, so it’s going to be tough. There’s very, many good players here and I don’t think there’s any easy matches.
“So right from the first round, you have to be playing very well to get through, and I guess to win this tournament you are going to be playing some great players along the way.”
The tournament’s top four seeds – Serena Williams, Agnieszka Radwanska, the defending champion Petra Kvitova and Sara Errani – have received first-round byes and will not be in action until Wednesday.
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
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Alyssa Ayres, Oxford University Press
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