Tennis Mailbag: How Players Like Rafael Nadal, Casper Ruud Are Handling the Saudi Question

The Six Kings Slam renews the debate around sportswashing. Plus, tennis’s Mount Rushmore and Iga Świątek’s new coach in Jon Wertheim’s latest mailbag.

Nadal announced he signed on as ambassador for the Saudi Tennis Federation in January. / Richard Pelham/Getty Images

• Here’s the most recent podcast episode of Served with Andy Roddick.

• Here’s a (nonpartisan) dispatch from Wisconsin, the swingiest swing state.

• Unmined footage of Rafael Nadal after the 2010 U.S. Open final. (Serious question: why didn’t ESPN have this?)

• Not to be outdone, here’s the 2024 version, thanks to Daria Kasatkina.

• Congrats to The Daily Show correspondent Michael Kosta whose memoir comes out next year. 

• There have been some big changes at the USTA. A management consultant-style press release was headlined “USTA Creates Single Cohesive Department To Enhance Support For Players At All Levels of Their Competitive Pathway” but the real headline is that Martin Blackman—not only a thoroughly decent guy but one with a commendable track record—is out. The new management thinks they have a better sense of player development, where to invest funds and how (whether?) to mint champions. Welp, your serve, as they say.

While eagerly awaiting season two of Nobody Wants This so we can see who portrays Tommy Haas …

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L. Jon Wertheim,

Of The Big Three, Rafael Nadal was my favorite because I found him the most genuine; plus, if ever I'd needed someone to represent me in a single life-or-death match, I'd have chosen Nadal, aka, The Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Sadly, I lost all my respect for him when I learned that he'd sold his soul to the Saudis for a few hundred million dollars, despite already being worth about a billion dollars. Honestly, any idea why a person so seemingly humble (and already ridiculously wealthy) would do something that tarnishes his once stellar legacy?    

Regards,
JAMIE

• This has come up more than a few times over the past year, both from readers and deep within tennis. And it came up again the other day with the Six Kings Slam that paid a half-dozen players a combined eight figures for a three-day Saudi exhibition. 

Why would Nadal do this? 

This cynical answer, of course: Ever since money was invented, it has explained so much about human behavior. Nadal is offered this vague position and says: You’re going to give me generational wealth for what is essentially a (re)branding exercise? And everyone from Cristiano Ronaldo to Greg Norman to Billie Jean King is already in the pool? Sign me up!

Cristiano Ronaldo signed a two-year deal with Saudi club Al Nassar in 2022 reportedly worth $200 million. / Victor Fraile-Imagn Images

Less cynically—and I do think we need to at least contemplate this—Saudi Arabia is, culturally, trending in a progressive direction. Women have rights that they lacked as recently as a few years ago. Sports, culture and soft power are driving forces. Maybe Nadal says: If I can use my name and the influence of sports to push the culture forward and away from repression and perhaps even bring democracy … sign me up!

It is all terribly fraught. But at some level, and at some point, we will get an answer here. The participating athletes will either be validated and cast as change agents. Or women will remain second-class citizens and the LGBTQIA+ community will remain under siege … and athletes will, at a minimum, be cast as useful idiots and at worse, complicit. Either this is cynical sportswashing, giving cover and credibility to a repressive autocracy. Or sports will prove to play a role in the reforming (improvement?) of a country and its culture.

From my vantage point, it’s an awfully big (and unnecessary) bet for King and Nadal who—never mind their wealth; do they really need another payday?—have so much invested in their reputation. But we don’t all have the same risk tolerance.

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Jon, with pro tennis back in South Dakota, maybe you want to give us your tennis Mount Rushmore?

G.S., Jacksonville.

• Yes, pro tennis comes to the Mount Rushmore State. 

To our non-American audience—I’m trying to be better about this—South Dakota is home to Mount Rushmore, into which the busts of four towering American presidents have been chiseled. The structure was completed in 1941, but lately, it’s become voguish to provide your Mount Rushmore list of … whatever. Speed metal drummers. NFL quarterbacks. Sous chefs. Think of it as the new version of “Desert Island CDs.”

Anyway, I’m happy to play along but, alas, have a boring answer.

Men: Novak Djokovic, Nadal, Roger Federer, Pete Sampras.

Women: Serena Williams, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Steffi Graf. 

We are open-minded. Maybe you make a case for homophobic Margaret Court simply based on majors. Maybe King gets bonus points for her off-court achievements. Maybe Rod Laver sneaks in (though at whose expense?) for the double Grand Slam. But I’m not sure picking tennis’s all-time top four lends itself to robust debate.

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Jon, what did you think of Casper Ruud’s answer to the question about playing in Saudi Arabia?

C.H., Philly

• Here’s Ruud. I applaud this answer. It’s smart. It’s reasonable. And it’s totally impromptu.

Actually, before we go further let’s linger here. Do we as sports fans—human beings?—draw sufficient distinctions between planned acts and impromptu acts? Behaving nobly at a planned event or some agent-brokered appearance is great. But doing it when a situation simply presents itself (see Nadal and Kasatkina comforting their opponents above) is something else entirely.

Here’s Ruud, sitting in a press conference, surely anticipating tennis questions. He gets this curveball. (A totally fair question but a curveball nonetheless) and delivers that response? Bravo. You can agree or disagree. But he’s clearly thought about the issue.

As for the content, he lays out the issue well. I would push back on two points: 

1) Moral relativism is seldom a strong argument. No one is perfect … everyone is doing it … what about X? Does every state criminalize homosexuality, hold mass public executions or rank 131 out of 146 countries in the gender gap index? If the answer is no, moral relativism falls apart. 

2) I think we need to talk more about the state’s role in these sporting events and differentiate accordingly. The U.S., for instance, is not perfect. France is not perfect. Far from it. But sporting events like the U.S. Open and Roland Garros are not state exercises. The federal government is not funding the tournament. They are not being run by government officials. Players are not—often as a condition of the deal—posing for photos with government ministers, taking part in national dances and generally being hired as a public relations exercise. 

(The Public Investment Fund, which sponsors tennis’s rankings, is the public fund for Saudi sovereign wealth. This is way different from a private company that happens to be located in country X.)

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Świątek hasn't had much success at majors outside of the French Open, which she has won three years in a row. / Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

Jon, I see that Iga Świątek has hired Wim Fissette as her new coach. Any thoughts on how this partnership will go?

Thanks, Davide

Świątek is such a fascinating player in some respects. She is dazzlingly talented. She is a concierge-level athlete. She could retire tomorrow and go down as a generational talent. And yet … there is this real vulnerability to her game. Especially off of clay, her results at majors are sorely lacking. For a top player, she projects so much discomfort. Part of that is humanizing. (Whenever athletes say words to the effect of, We are not robots, I find myself reflexively nodding.) Part of it is her unease wearing the jacket—to her, a straitjacket—of celebrity. But for her sake, you wish there were more evidence of joy.

How will the coach fare? One variable here: Świątek is extraordinarily close to her psychologist Daria Abramowicz. Usually, the coach doubles as a motivator, hype man and dimestore shrink. The dynamic is altered and complicated when there is also a mental coach. How will the organizational pieces fit together? How (and how well) will Fisette coexist with another team member? To be determined …

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Hi, Jon,

That was a wild semifinal in Wuhan, with Aryna Sabalenka defeating Coco Gauff despite losing six of her 13 service games. A big reason was that Gauff double-faulted 21 times, amazingly making Kasatkina's second serve look good. Despite her overall strong results in Asia, Gauff's serve obviously remains an issue. Any thoughts on why her coaches haven't helped her find a solution? And given her level of play once into points, will she compete for No. 1 in 2025 if finding that solution?

Thanks, Rob

• Andy and I talked about this last week. Gauff did not win a major in 2024 and, I suspect, considers this year a minor disappointment. She also is ranked No. 3 in the world with an obvious defect in her game. That must give her some small measure of long-term confidence. 

Here’s another problem with tennis’s horrific schedule: There’s no time to improve your craft. What did (does?), say, LeBron James do in the offseason? He worked on his game. He straightened out the mechanics. He added moves. Why? Because he has 120 days off from the season’s end in May/June until training camp. And even training camp, by definition, allows for preparation. 

I have heard some insider types float the idea that Gauff shuts it down for a few months to clean up her technique. Great, but she will lose points, miss mandatory tournaments and may even risk fines. So instead, she spends a few days in December, wrapped around the holidays, to correct existential issues?

Gauff's serving struggles were on full display when she was knocked out of the U.S. Open in the Round of 16. / Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

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Jon, given how much data exists in the world and how creative we can be with numbers, why is tennis still devoted to the 52-week ranking which simply awards a fixed number of points? Maybe look at how the UTR has an algorithm that uses scoreline and quality of opponent. Maybe give bonus points for beating top players. But why does every win count the same?

Charles, L.V.

• I assume that’s Charles of Las Vegas and not a Holy Roman emperor. But good question.

I don’t disagree that the rolling rankings is a crass system. But sports are binary. You win or you lose. You’re not credited for double wins if it’s a sensational knockout or a blowout. A clumsy own goal counts as much as a bit of Messi magic. You don’t win a double gold medal at the Olympics if you set a world record. You win extravagantly or you win ugly … you win in an upset or you barely hang on to beat a qualifier … you grind for three hours or do a Jannik Sinner d. Daniil Medvedev in Saudi job. Is there not a beauty to the simplicity of every win counts the same?

As for bonus points, it’s been tried. But it’s a tough sell with the hunted i.e. the stars. There’s enough incentive—a big enough dorsal-side target—on the seeds. Now you need to create an additional bonus? No, thanks.

I think the other big issue is the possibility of corruption. Whether it’s doping or match-fixing or this, sports are in big trouble when there are questions about the honesty and legitimacy of the competition. It’s easy to see how weighted rankings or scoreline rankings, for instance, give too much possibility for manipulation and engineering. 

In most cases, like officiating, technology ought to be embraced not feared. Here, I think we are okay as is.

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Jon, 

There is really only one answer to the now slippery slope of bad on-court behavior. There needs to be an automatic default for anyone that throws a racket, hits (or bounces) a ball into the stands or toward officials/ball kids, physically or verbally threatens an official, or drops F-bombs like they are raindrops. It needs to be immediate and happen on the first offense by the player. If the ATP and WTA implemented this rule and actually enforced it, I can guarantee you that the bad behavior would disappear overnight. 

After all, as soon as the players had to get their own towels, the need for those towels almost entirely disappeared except for the hottest of days and for the players who sweat profusely.

The tours also really need to understand how all of this affects viewership. Between the abuse accusations against Alexander Zverev (and the ATP's complete lack of accountability for that) and Zverev almost hitting a chair umpire in a clear attempt to intimidate, I no longer watch any match that he is playing. I just turn the channel. As the bad behavior escalates, my list of who I will not watch will grow until the tours lose me as a fan and viewer altogether.  

Just saying ...

Thanks.

Lilas Pratt, Marietta

• This is not unique to tennis but it’s a tricky business and the sport is really backed into a corner. Michael Lewis had a podcast about authority figures and this came up repeatedly. If you follow the strict letter of the law, it leads to bad outcomes. A Japanese doubles player inadvertently hits a ball kid and is defaulted—and, before appeal, stripped of prize money. That seems unfair. The chair should use subjective judgment and read the situation, and consider externalities. But, wait, then you have Alex Michelsen inadvertently rifling a ball, hitting a fan and going unpunished … and that seems unfair, too. This is a prima facie violation and he’s allowed to continue simply because it’s a final?

This will sound naïve, but, on matters of officiating, I wonder if there isn’t a summit. Listen, guys, let’s all make a good-faith effort here. Players, you behave better, stop abusing officials, stop rifling balls, speed up play and overall make a better attempt to follow the rules. Officials, you make a better attempt to read the tempo and tenor of a match and depart from strict scrutiny when, say, it’s late in the match and a player known to be fair and generally fast-playing is a few ticks over on the shot clock.

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An ode to Nadal to take us out:

Rafael Nadal, Vamos!

Another Grand Slam match
let the suffering begin
yellow missiles pounded
with impressive arc and spin
exploding off the tennis court
proclaim your will to win
the leftie from Mallorca
will we see your like again?

muscular, athletic
once dressed in pirate fashion
sweating from the get-go
every stroke a thing of passion
sculpting angles like a master
opponents on a string
oh long shall we remember
‘The Clay Court King’

With fearless forehand drive
or penetrating backhand slice
always with a calculating eye
you rolled the dice
your volleys at the net
leaving tennis fans in awe
but most of all your will to win
on court laid down the law

Shaped by Uncle Toni
almost too humble at times
but how things changed
once you stepped between the lines
covering every inch of court
with a warrior’s speed
hitting impossible winners
never willing to cede

Playing the Djoker and the Fed
inspired you all to your prime
at Melbourne, Wimbledon, New York
epics time after time
every winner, every error
we felt down through the years
yet you stoic in the aftermath
amidst our ecstasy and tears

With those tears we longed to soften
the injuries you incurred so often
and through each and every setback
prayed for you to get back
to the top of a game
without you never quite the same
yet you would state without a fuss
“the game is bigger than any one of us”

But come the clay court season
how you rose above them all 
the terre battue the canvas
for The Maestro of them all
hushed silence and reverence
as you served out the game
then sheer joy and relief
another Roland Garros to your name!

In victory or defeat
respectful to all
your character like your game
left us in thrall
no matter the role -
brother, husband, father, son
proceeding with grace
Yes, you were ‘The One’

Oh Rafa how I will miss you
not for how many you won
more because you always felt like
cherished brother, grateful son
May you ‘enjoy the journey’
a value you held dear
always grateful for your team
your rock down the years

For your beautiful wife, Maria Francesca
the depths of her love only heaven knows
her support ever present
to sustain you through the lows
for Maria Isabel, your sister dear
devoted from an early age
and your parents, Sebastian y Ana Maria
muchas gracias all as you turn the page

From young fearless warrior
to elder statesman of the game
long shall we remember
your distinguished name
Rafael Nadal Parera
Te amamos!
Rafa, Rafa, Rafa!
Muchas gracias y Vamos!

Padraic Slater
Bard from Kitsilano
Vancouver, BC, Canada