Inside Tennis’s Saudi Arabia Conundrum

The ATP and WTA are at the center of the kingdom’s latest sportswashing campaign, putting players under pressure.

Editors’ note, upon publishing: Questions in this mailbag were lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Hey everyone …

• So, Andy Roddick and I are going to give this podcast thing a go—for my next impression: A.J. Hawk—and we will send updates and social media clips accordingly. As I understand it, you can find us on Tennis Channel, YouTube and, well, more announcements to come soon.

• Thanks to everyone who responded to Episode 1, which, yes, helped get this thing sold, but also convinced us we could have some fun with this and perhaps fill a lane.

• Thanks, too, to all of you who wrote in about Sports Illustrated. I need to be careful, but it’s not pleasant and we hold out hope for a positive resolution. Speaking for all my colleagues, your support is appreciated. (So is tennis’ support in drawing attention to the union-busting.) Sounds trite, but truly: you all are awesome.

• Here’s a link to Sunday’s 60 Minutes piece on sports gambling. When tennis figures out its Saudi strategy (see below), perhaps this is the next order of business on the agenda?

Onward …

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Hi,

I’d love to hear more about the proposed SuperTour and the Saudis. How are the players reacting to the idea? What is the chatter in the locker room? Also, what is your take? And is the proposal for both men and women, or just men? Finally, how do you feel this ties in with [Rafael] Nadal’s deal with the Saudis?

Love the mailbag, thanks for your work!

Beate, London

• Thanks. We can—and I imagine will—speak a lot more about this in the future, especially after this week’s announcement, heralding a six-man event in Riyadh later this season. For better or worse, the proposed tour, galvanized by Saudi money, has given us a glimpse into players. The default mode—and this is not to condemn—goes something like this: “My career is short. I am an athlete, not a politician. No good comes from getting involved with thorny subjects, especially in the age of social media. Whether it’s playing in a country that criminalizes homosexuality, or taking a stand on Alexander Zverev, no good comes from me departing from the ATP-provided talking points. I want to make the most money I can before I retire; and don’t care where that might be. I want to avoid controversy, especially if it is going to exact a price on my tennis and take up mental bandwidth.”

Nadal has been named an ambassador for the Saudi Tennis Federation :: Mike Frey/USA TODAY Sports

Me? I have a lot of thoughts here. The main one: it’s not binary. We love taking sides and firm stands. Unfortunately, this is complicated. Life is complicated. Rationalizing playing in Saudi Arabia by saying “no country is perfect” is a cop-out. Unless every country publically executes citizens, has no penal code and does not treat men and women equally, this moral relativism argument is irrelevant.

What about: “We go to Starbucks and use iPhones, and Saudis back those companies.” That, too, is a losing argument, I’d submit. There is a difference between investment and branding. Athletes and events are being used to launder a country’s reputation in the face of human rights abuses. This is manifestly different from “Saudis sink their money into Apple and Facebook and all the NVIDIA companies.”

On the other hand … there is undeniable social progress afoot in Saudi Arabia. The whole premise behind sportswashing is, at some level, a capitulation, an admission that society needs to modernize and present itself differently to the global community. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I saw women boxing, a non-binary deejay and girls without head coverings vaping. If paying Billie Jean King a fat fee to come for some photo ops, and trotting her out to talk about bridge-building, maybe that’s not a bad thing?

With respect to tennis, I think Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert have a sensible take. Essentially, things might be moving in the right direction, but we still have concerns. Let’s pump the brakes. Let’s monitor and if you can meet these conditions first, then we’ll engage. Decriminalizing homophobia would be a start. Doing away with the wife-tracker app would be great, too. Don’t assassinate Washington Post reporters. For now, a country with your human rights record and treatment of women is not a suitable site for the crown jewel event of the WTA, a tour built on principles of inclusion, equality and social justice. (And wouldn’t it be nice if the ATP used the “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” logic, and showed support?)

(In the spirit of the conflicts-of-interest disclosure too often lacking in tennis … I am involved in a venture with Navratilova and Evert—details to come at a later date—and have precisely zero objectivity about their blazing awesomeness, individually and as a pair.)

Tennis players are, as a rule, bright and informed, especially about their tour. (I once had a conversation with a player about the ATP pension plan and he not only knew the nuances and minutiae but the legislative history.) The idea that none are keeping abreast of the serious and ugly charges against Zverev (as a whole host of players claimed in Australia), is, of course absurd. But, less absurdly, they’ve made a decision: it does not benefit me to get roped into this.

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Hi, Jon,

Just a quick note on your column: Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi are playing Simona Halep in Romania, not Hungary, as currently stated in your story. It’s a Romanian event in a Romanian city.

That’s a pretty sensitive topic/mistake for some people in both countries, actually :) So I thought I should give you a heads up. Great read, otherwise, as always. All the best.

Adrian

• Budapest, Bucharest…one of those Eastern European “ests”… Bad unforced error by me. Yes, they are playing with Halep and Andrei Pavel in Romania. As one does. Thanks for the catch. I can’t stress this enough: we should respect athletes who retire and choose to leave the public eye. We respect athletes who retire and choose to remain in the public eye. It’s great these two titans are so prominent and accessible. Innumerable fans are thrilled. It’s great for tennis. This has been a dramatic policy reversal. It’s almost like Tracy Chapman ending her exile to appear alongside Luke Combs at the Grammy Awards. But so what? Welcome back.

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You know what feat has aged like a fine wine? Kim Clijsters winning the 2009 US Open in her third tournament back after giving birth to her daughter. It was impressive at the time, but especially so in hindsight. It’s been awesome seeing so many women come back after giving birth these past few years. But their results underscore that it’s a long road back, and fairytale stories are no guarantee.

Robert, New York

• Amen. Applause to all the mothers on the tour. Speaking from my profound experience as a middle-aged man … I suspect some of the adjustments are physical and physiological. But surely some of the challenges are also about rhythms, scheduling and bending time. (Discussion for another time: why so much Australian Open chatter about “Where was Naomi Osaka’s daughter?” and so little about “Where was Daniil Medvedev’s?”). Clijsters’s ability to play better and win more majors post-maternity leave than pre was just extraordinary. Again, I suspect it’s not simply about getting conditioning back; it’s about balancing the time, emotions and competing demands familiar to any parent.

And, yes, it becomes more impressive as we (happily) see increasing data points that confirm the difficulty. Pausing to note that while Serena Williams reached four finals, post-motherhood, there have been no major-winning moms since K.C. (and her sunshine band, he said dad-jokingly).

Clijsters won back-to-back U.S. Open women’s singles titles in 2009 and ’10 :: Susan Mullane/USA TODAY Sports

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Are players explicitly told they cannot take towels at Majors. If not, why are we calling it larceny. If they’re not breaking any rules, why all the reactionary outrage?

@feendog33

• Just to be clear, I was being facetious. Many tournaments even bake into their budget the inevitability that players will avail themselves of (not steal!) multiple tournament towels. It’s harmless. It’s a fun little tennis quirk. But it’s still funny to watch the lengths millionaire athletes will go to acquire a piece of terry cloth they could buy for $40 at the merch stand. Players finish a match, shake hands and then slink to the other end of the court to retrieve their linen before surreptitiously stuffing it in the bag … that will never get old. I will refrain from naming names, but I once saw a winner and loser do this drill simultaneously, each marching to the opposite end of the court before departing.

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“The Ukraine storyline has faded, Peng Shuai-style. But do note: It was only two years ago that the country was barbarously invaded and the situation is very much fluid.”

Please, please know that referring to the war as a storyline feels like denying the lived reality of over 40 million Ukrainians (not to mention many others on the borders.) It’s sad to think people are treating a real, unbearably painful war as entertainment.

Nothing about the war is fading for Ukrainians. (We should also not forget that the war actually started in 2014). Please read this article about why Ukraine cannot be allowed to be forgotten—with photos from this week’s bombings, which do not stop: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/25/ukraine-fatigue-why-im-fighting-to-stop-the-world-forgetting-us

I also feel that as one of tennis’s biggest journalists you may have some power to stop Ukraine from being buried within the sport.

Full disclosure, I have worked with Ukrainians since 2017, and currently manage a team of Ukrainians based all over Ukraine from west to east, so I hope you understand why I feel strongly enough to write in about this. Sending before I think better of it.

Cheers, Nikki Jewell

• Thanks. I’m glad you sent this. And, yes, that could have been expressed more delicately. My point is essentially your point. We used tennis—and the plight of tennis players like Elina Svitolina and Dayana Yastremska—to tell the story of the horrors unfolding in Ukraine. Those horrors have not subsided. Russia’s guilt and shame have not diminished. Yet, as fans and media, the backstory is not in the heavy rotation it once was.

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I can’t believe you didn’t mention [Elena] Rybakina when someone asked “Who are the most ‘old school’ players now in regards to celebrations?” Her reaction to winning Wimbledon 2022 is legendary! Prior to your answer, we didn’t know how [Jannik] Sinner would react to a major win. Now we know. We will have to wait for [Jessica] Pegula’s reaction. Thanks,

Ron (Maple Ridge, BC)

• Yes, Rybakina! She won Wimbledon and reacted with all the zeal usually reserved for successfully opening a jar of peanut butter. (She let the Kazakh delegation do the emoting.) I still say this is a lot about the situation. Win a final 6–2, 6–3, 6–3 and it’s weird to make snow angels on the court. Win in five sets, and it’s weird not to.

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Question for you—some mates and I were discussing Ash Barty and her decision to play some more golf, and we got to talking about her slam wins. Is Ash the only player to win multiple grand slams and never physically play to defend her title? The 19 RG title she didn’t try to defend due to covid, and the 21 Wimbledon and 22 AO she’d retired. We’ve seen some one timers like [Flavia] Pennetta and [Marion] Bartoli do this, but we couldn’t name any multiple winners to do so.

Craig Mudge, Jamestown, SA

• Great question. You’re right. Pennetta did the retirement mic drop (and Robin Roberts's jaw dropped) but that was only one major. Pete Sampras in 2002. Bartoli is a good one. But, I’m at a loss here. At least in the Open era, (Rod Laver won the Grand Slam in 1962 and then had the audacity to decide he wanted to get paid for his efforts.) I can’t think of a player winning multiple major titles (Wimbledon and the Australian Open) without mounting a defense.

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Shots:

• Some of you might know the name Deepak Sivaraman. Apart from being an active member of this tennis community, he writes an outstanding Substack on economics and decision-making, to which I encourage you to subscribe.

• The Southern Tennis Foundation, the charitable affiliate of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Southern Section, announces the establishment of the Julie Ditty Qualls Memorial Endowed Scholarship to honor one of the best tennis players from Kentucky. The scholarship was created by her parents, Juanita and Jack Ditty, of Ashland, Ky., her siblings and the Julie Ditty Qualls Foundation. Julie Ditty Qualls was ranked No. 89 in singles and No. 65 in doubles in the WTA world rankings. She holds the record of 39 titles on the USTA Pro Circuit. She was a three-time All-American at Vanderbilt and won the second-most tennis matches in Vanderbilt history. She passed away at the age of 42 on Aug. 31, 2021, after having breast cancer for six years. Donate online at the Southern Tennis Foundation website.