The women’s and men’s tennis tours come through Dubai in consecutive weeks this time of year, tournaments that each go under the name of “Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships,” though they run consecutively and not concurrently … and it’s a pretty big deal.

Odd thing about the events this year? Two months ago, the women’s tournament looked loaded, with eight of the top 10, and the men’s looked nice at the very top, but a little shaky after that.

And then the tournaments happened, and the men got a lot more interesting than the women.

On the women’s side, Petra Kvitova pleaded illness just as the tournament was starting, and a few days in Victoria Azarenka gave some lame excuse. Pick any you like. She had been healthy enough to win at Doha a few days before. And there went the world Nos 2 and 1, respectively. Three of the older stars (Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Kim Clijsters) had already chosen not to play, and the pickings got slim.

The highest-seeded player became Caroline Wozniacki, who was No. 1 for most of last year but fell to No. 4 after the Australian Open, and hasn’t played well in months and went out in the quarter-finals here.

As it turned out, the final was interesting but not star-studded. Agnieszka Radwanska defeated Julia Goerges to win the title.

The men’s side, however, had Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Andy Murray, and that’s three of the Big Four (Nos. 1, 3 and 4, to be exact) in the tournament, and they all showed up, as they said they would … and three made the semis, along with Juan Martin del Potro, who is No 10.

Nice pair of semi-finals today, then: Djokovic versus Murray and Federer versus Del Potro. And what figures to be a very tasty final of the sort that will have global fans awaiting the outcome.

My colleague Chuck Culpepper has been all over the second half of this tournament. For this morning’s editions of The National he wrote about how good men’s tennis is right now, but how you might not notice because of the four beasts at the top of the game — the three mentioned above, and Rafael Nadal.

And this just in: In the early match today, Murray beat Djokovic, who had on this event the past three years. That’s a very nice result for Murray, though he certainly would prefer to beat Djokovic in a grand slam event.

Also, in this morning’s paper, Ahmed Rizvi of The National did a piece on why the Dubai events rank high among the players. Lots of care and feeding, good fields (well, usually) and nice weather, among other things.

So, these two weeks, end of February, early March, are when the UAE has its brush with elite tennis. Though the men’s version turned out to be far more elite than the women’s, this year.