US Open fifth seed Ons Jabeur is pushing for the ATP and WTA to take some of their events to Saudi Arabia. It has already been confirmed that the men’s Next Gen Finals will be staged in Jeddah until 2027.
Recent reports have also suggested that the WTA Finals could be hosted in Riyadh. However, many players are sceptial over competing in Saudi because of the country’s poor human rights record.
But 2022 US Open finalist Jabeur is excited at the prospect of competing in the Middle East. “As an Arab player, I’d be very excited to be there,” Jabeur said. “I am someone pushing for a change, pushing to give more and more opportunities especially for women.
“I know in Saudi they’re changing things and they’re evolving. I’ve been there last year to give a speech and interview there. It was very nice meeting a lot of amazing women there. For me, I was trying to push to have tennis in Saudi.”
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Jabeur insisted that it would be a positive move in hosting a WTA event in Saudi. She added: “I think it’s a great step. I think it’s something that could help the Arab world to have more tennis players, to get more involved in sports.
“If they play there, and hopefully if I qualify, it will be a great honour and opportunity for me to go and play there, especially meeting a lot of women. They told me they look up to me. That would be a great opportunity for me to meet them and speak to them.”
Tennis icon Martina Navratilova took to Twitter to say that she would have boycotted any events in Saudi. She wrote: “Hard to believe I am getting c**p for saying I would not go play tennis in Saudi Arabia. From all kinds of angles. WTAF???.”
Current world No 1 Iga Swiatek is keeping her cards close to her chest but is frustrated by the delay in announcing the venue for the WTA Finals.
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“I don’t have a lot of thoughts because we hear many stuff on tour. I’m still waiting for, like, the final decision. We as players, we are not involved in all the discussions. I’m kind of waiting on what WTA will tell us,” Swiatek said.
“For sure, it’s pretty unfortunate and annoying we don’t have any decision yet. But I’ll see. I’ll probably have more to say when the decision is going to be out.
“Obviously we want to know because it’s hard to plan also what’s going to happen after,” she said. “I would love to play Billie Jean King Cup Finals, especially when we got a wild card. I don’t know where the Finals are going to be, how it’s going to look with the traveling and everything.”
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