Fresh from their doubles crown at the WTA Tour Finals, Erin Routliffe and Gaby Dabrowski have become the latest marquee signings for the ASB Classic at Stanley Street in January. It will be the third time that Dabrowski has played in Auckland, but the first since she reached the semi-finals with Yang Zhao-xuan in 2017. Somewhat coincidentally, that was the first year that Routliffe played here. With all her success on the tour in the last two years, it still seems really odd that Routliffe has only ever won one match at Stanley Street, and that didn’t come until last January. She and Dabrowski will be the top seeds.
Lulu Sun will headline the women’s singles draw from a New Zealand perspective, and is the highest-ranked player of those announced so far, but we will also see Emma Raducanu for the third year in a row, plus former US Open champion Bianca Andreescu and four time major winner Naomi Osaka. The latter is another whose only previous visit was in 2017, when she unfortunately had to retire through injury, but Andreescu reached the final in 2019 before losing to Auckland crowd favourite Julia Goerges.
Alejandro Tabilo from Chile is back to defend his singles title, having become the first qualifier to win the event in ten years, and he will be joined by young American star Ben Shelton. Former Aucklander Cam Norrie, who has had bad luck with injuries this year, is raring to go after regaining full fitness and reaching the final at the ATP tournament in Metz last week. We’re still waiting to find out which men’s doubles stars will be making an appearance, with the only certainty being that Marcus Daniell will be playing his last tournament before retirement.