Tennis fans predict surprise Dubai Tennis Championships winner ahead of Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina

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The Dubai Tennis Championships are already underway for the 26th edition of the WTA event.

Last year saw Mirra Andreeva win the Dubai Tennis Championships title, which at the time was the biggest victory of her career before she went on to win Indian Wells straight after.

Andreeva is back to defend her title, but there are some big names missing after both Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek withdrew from the Dubai Tennis Championships.

This leaves Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina as the top seed in Dubai, but neither she nor Coco Gauff have been predicted to win the title by The Tennis Gazette readers.

Alexandra Eala predicted to win the Dubai Tennis Championships

Coco Gauff suffered a shock early exit at the Qatar Open last week, losing her only match to lucky loser Elisabetta Cocciaretto.

While the American will now be looking to turn things around, Gauff has been handed a tricky draw in Dubai.

This appears to have been on the mind of many of our readers, when we asked them to predict the Dubai Tennis Championships winner on TalkingPoints.

After receiving 115 votes from our readers leading up to the tournament, Gauff received only 15 votes (13.04%).

Gauff lost her only match she played at the Dubai Tennis Championships this year, and it does not appear that our readers expect her to do much better this year.

Rybakina has only lost two matches so far this year, and 27 of our 115 voters (23.38%) believe she will not add to these losses at the Dubai Tennis Championships.

However, the overwhelming favorite to win the title in Dubai according to our voters is Alexandra Eala.

Eala is a hugely popular player on the WTA Tour and the Filipina has huge support at nearly every tournament she plays, perhaps causing the 45.22% votes she received in our poll.

Seven votes went to Amanda Anisimova and just one vote went to Emma Raducanu, while 13 votes have been given to other players.

In the comments of our TalkingPoint, some of the other names that have been floated as potential champions in Dubai include teenage superstar Iva Jovic, Elina Svitolina and Qatar Open runner-up Victoria Mboko.

Alexandra Eala’s potential route to the Dubai Tennis Championships title

Eala reached the Miami Open semifinals last year, in a real breakthrough run for the Filipina superstar.

The 20-year-old has been unable to surpass the second round of a WTA 1000 tournament since then, but our readers clearly think she is going to be able to do just that.

However, Eala will have to do it the hard way, with a potential second round match against sixth seed and former champion Jasmine Paolini.

Some of the other seeds in her half of the draw include Rybakina, Gauff, Svitolina, Belinda Bencic and Qatar Open champion Karolina Muchova.

Before Eala can even think about any of these players she will have to overcome American lucky loser Hailey Baptiste.

This is the second meeting between the two players, with Eala beating Baptiste on the grass of Eastbourne last year.