Simona Halep, who skipped the Palermo Ladies Open last week, was making her first appearance on the WTA Tour since her title triumph at the Dubai Tennis Championships in February.
The Middle Eastern event has become the first tennis tournament outside of the Australian and U.S. Opens to offer equal prize money to both sexes.
Both the ATP and WTA Tours released a joint statement saying the decision was taken in line with local authorities due to "health and safety concerns" and they were reassessing the calendar for the rest of the year.
Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka will join Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in playing a pre-Australian Open warm-up exhibition
Russian and Belarusian players will be allowed to compete at the US Open this year but only as neutrals, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) announced on Tuesday.
The 15 candidate matches, from which one will be voted the greatest, were selected by the WTA.
New mum Victoria Azarenka wants to see more child-friendly tournaments on the WTA Tour, saying not enough is done to help players travelling with young families.
Laver Cup organisers say the exhibition event will go ahead in September as planned despite the French Open moving to the same dates as the implications of the French Tennis Federation (FFT)'s shock gambit began to reverberate on Wednesday. The September 25-27 Laver Cup, an exhibition event co-created by Roger Federer which has always featured the Swiss great and one of Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic.
Maria Sharapova hit out at the ruling body of women's tennis (WTA) on Friday for making her take part in a publicity shoot on the eve of the Italian Open. She could be fined $700,000 if she declines to do the shoot, which is part of the WTA's multi-million dollar global marketing campaign. The tournament begins on May 12.
In the email, the WTA said it wanted to "clear up false and misleading information" about the conditions players would face at the Australian Open.
Serena Williams has been stuck on 23 slams since triumphing at the Australian Open in January 2017.
Naomi Osaka's return a boost for women's tour, says Mouratoglou
Osaka, the 2019 and 2021 Melbourne Park champion, has not played on the WTA Tour since the Pan Pacific Open in September, where she pulled out of her second-round match against Beatriz Haddad Maia in Tokyo due to illness.
Maria Sharapova made light of her long injury layoff by advancing to the last four of the WTA Finals with an unbeaten record in round robin play after the Russian breezed past Flavia Pennetta 7-5, 6-1 on Thursday, and booked a surprise passage to the semi-finals for Agnieszka Radwanska.
American teenage sensation Coco Gauff progressed to her maiden WTA final as she eased past Germany's Andrea Petkovic 6-4, 6-4 at the Linz Open on Saturday. The 15-year-old Gauff became the youngest player to reach a WTA final since Czech Republic's Nicole Vaidisova won the Tashkent Open in 2004, also aged 15.
Former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko is the latest player to withdraw from the US Open, organisers of the tennis Grand Slam confirmed on Monday.
Tennis great Leander Paes says it is "humbling" to be the first Indian tennis player and the first Asian male tennis player to be nominated for the prestigious International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Wimbledon announced that it had barred all Russian and Belarusian players from this year's championships
'I've accomplished a lot this past year and I feel I can do even more, now I actually believe I can do more after all of this success so I am going to keep striving and hopefully win many more Grand Slams. I have been thinking about playing the Olympics for a couple of years, I think it is a very special event'
World number two Simona Halep tested positive for the novel coronavirus and is recovering well from her mild symptoms.
Petra Kvitova overcame a sluggish start and 10 double faults to beat Madison Keys 6-7(6), 6-4, 6-3 on Saturday and advance to the final of the Cincinnati Open, where she will face Caroline Garcia, the first qualifier to reach the final of a WTA 1000 tournament.
India's Karman Kaur Thandi has clinched her second W60 ITF title of her career after winning at the Evansville event in the USA.
Sania will rest this week as the action on the WTA tour circuit will resume on May 1.
Czech Petra Kvitova overcame a second set meltdown to dispatch Angelique Kerber 6-2, 0-6, 6-3 in the final of the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo on Saturday to claim her 11th WTA tour title.
The 30-year-old is the first German woman to win Wimbledon since Steffi Graf in 1996.
Serena Williams has clinched the year-end women's World No 1 ranking for the third time in her career after winning two Grand Slam titles during an excellent 2013.
Her last Grand Slam triumph came in 2017 and she has not won a WTA title since lifting the ASB Classic in Auckland at the start of the 2020 season.
Sabalenka overpowers Raducanu, Osaka falls
Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff stressed the need to start matches earlier at Grand Slams
Wimbledon's decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players from this year's tournament following the invasion of Ukraine was wrong and lacked respect, world number one Novak Djokovic said on Monday.
A member of French player Aravane Rezai's family has been banned from WTA events and is under investigation because of a "serious safety matter" affecting her "health and well being", the tour said on Sunday.
Russia's Dinara Safina said the players were unhappy with the changes being made to the 2009 WTA Tour schedule.
World No. 1 Novak Djokovic is determined to give it his best shot in Paris to win the elusive Olympic gold medal.
Three women in the field have topped the world rankings this season, incumbent Simona Halep and her predecessors Garbine Muguruza and Karolina Pliskova, but none of them have been able to kick on and cement their place as the tour's dominant player.
The Dubai Championships was fined a record $300,000 by the governing body of women's tennis (WTA) on Friday after top Israeli player Shahar Peer was barred from taking part in this week's event. The WTA said in a statement the fine was the largest levied against a WTA Tour member and Peer would be awarded $44,250 -- the average prize money she earned per tournament in 2008.
World number one Serena Williams was named WTA Player of the Year for a second time at a tour ceremony on Thursday. Williams, who did not attend the event, won the US Open last year and reached the Wimbledon final. She also claimed a gold medal with sister Venus in the doubles at the Beijing Olympics. In her career, the American has claimed ten Grand Slam titles and she was also the WTA Player of the Year in 2002.
Russians scoffed at Wimbledon's efforts to keep their compatriots out of the tournament after Moscow-born Elena Rybakina became the first player representing Kazakhstan to reach a Grand Slam final.
US Open champion Daniil Medvedev may have to provide assurances that he does not support Russian president Vladimir Putin if he is to compete at this year's Wimbledon, British Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston said on Tuesday.
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