It was only a matter of time before Saudi Arabia became involved in professional tennis. So far, they have only organized exhibition matches – in December, Carlos Alcaraz faced Novak Djokovic, and Ons Jabeur faced Aryna Sabalenka – but this was only a foretaste of real interference on the Tour. The Saudis are already hosting the Next Gen ATP Finals. There is also more and more talk about their organization of the WTA Finals.
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More scuffles. ATP intends to block the “Six Kings Slam”. But the Saudis are smart
The real bomb was the official information about the show event “6 Kings Slam”, which is part of a larger cultural and entertainment festival that will take place in October in Riyadh. The top ATP Tour players will take part – Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev, Jannik Sinner and Holger Rune. Each of them will be able to count on a financial reward of at least $1.5 million. The winner will receive $6 million. For comparison, the Italian tennis player just pocketed just over $2 million after winning the Australian Open. He still had to pay a large tax on this.
However, the event in Saudi Arabia was questionable due to the actions and rules of the ATP. The competition will take place in October, in parallel with other official ATP Tour events. The rules state that tennis players cannot participate in such exhibition events for more than three consecutive days while an official ATP competition is in progress.
However, the Saudi organizers have already come up with a plan to avoid disqualification of the competitors – after two days of competition, there is a one-day break. This cycle will be repeated throughout the nine-day tournament. By never playing for three days in a row, tennis players do not risk disqualification by the ATP. In October, the mandatory Masters 1000 tournaments will be held in Shanghai and Paris.
2024-02-10 07:32:00
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