WTA Tour Final: Garbine Muguruza's Riyadh tournament faces new challenges after chaos

The WTA Tour Finals in Saudi Arabia were never going to be anything under the radar.

Judy Murray, a top coach and mother of Andy, the two-time Wimbledon champion, gives clinics. There will be events focused on women's health issues. A 5,000-seat stadium-within-a-stadium has been built at King Saud University.

And Spain's Garbine Muguruza, a two-time Grand Slam champion, former world number 1 and a bold name in tennis, is tournament director.

She played the event, she won the event, said WTA Tour CEO Steve Simon. She has a unique perspective.

As the women's tennis tour arrives in a kingdom with a history of suppressing women's rights, it has mustered all the star power it can muster alongside the eight players who will make it an event. In for a dime, in for more than $15 million (11.5 million), which was the total prize money brokered in April this year in the three-year deal between the WTA Tour and the Saudi Tennis Federation (STF).

If Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Jasmine Paolini, Elena Rybakina, Jessica Pegula, Zheng Qinwen or Barbora Krejcikova can hoist the trophy at the end without losing a match, the undefeated champion will receive more than $5 million (3.8 million ) more than any Grand Slam tournament.

Muguruza takes on the role as the WTA seeks to balance its marquee event after five years of turmoil by bringing its main asset to a country that has never staged a major tennis event and has been heavily criticized for using major sporting events to sports to wash. to clarify its human rights record.

We want stability, Muguruza said in an interview on Zoom in July. In that sense, she has nowhere to go but up.

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At the end of the summer of 2023, the WTA Tour still did not know where the eight best tennis players in the world would play their crown tournament of the year. After a lengthy process, Cancun, Mexico, was chosen for an event that descended into chaos and sparked a full-fledged player revolt. It rained. A temporary outdoor stadium, built on a parking lot after the roof of the chosen indoor location was deemed too low, creaked. Balls bounced unevenly and swirled in high winds in front of mostly empty seats.

World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka said on social media she felt disrespected. The WTA provided players with talking points about hosting the Tour Finals in a country that criminalizes homosexuality, and advised them to consider saying I'd love to play wherever the WTA Finals are hosted, it is a prestigious event as The Athletics reported last year.

The WTA said that following the lengthy selection process, they were following an accelerated timeline to ensure the stadium and court meet our strict performance standards.

That one-off tournament in Cancun followed one-off tournaments in Fort Worth, Texas and Guadalajara, also in Mexico. China ended a 10-year deal to host the Tour finals in Shenzhen from 2019 to 2028. It hosted the 2019 event before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the 2020 edition entirely and travel restrictions in China caused it to move to Guadalajara for 2021.

Aryna Sabalenka criticized last year's WTA Tour Finals in Cancun, where rain frequently interrupted play (Robert Prange / Getty Images)

In November that year, Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, of sexual assault in social media posts that quickly disappeared. After Simon called for a full and transparent investigation that did not take place, the WTA suspended all tournaments in China in December. It ended the suspension that cost the Tour tens of millions of dollars a year and a half later because it had been ineffective and damaged the sport. China responded by terminating the WTA's lucrative deal for the Tour finals, costing it even more.

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Muguruza won that Guadalajara event in 2021, her last major victory as she struggled with injuries, motivation and self-confidence. The WTA Finals are the last diamond of the year, where the best of the best must attend and perform, she said.

Everything must be ready.

Muguruza, 31, who was keen to find ways to stay involved in the sport after her retirement, said her first discussions with the tour involved serving as a community ambassador for the event. That would have been a largely ceremonial position, focused on promotional events. That's when the officials came up with the idea of ​​serving as tournament director.

Simon said in an interview earlier this year that installing a familiar face as tournament director, someone who has retired within the past five years, would hopefully send players the message that the tour would ensure their concerns are addressed long before they to proceed. arrived.

Serving as tournament director for the Tour Finals is a little different than other tournaments, where solving the scheduling puzzle for hundreds of matches can be a huge challenge. At the Tour Finals, where only the top eight players and doubles teams compete, the schedule is set in advance and everyone plays on the same court, which is indoors, so the weather can't wreak havoc on it.

That has allowed Muguruza to delve into the more mundane aspects of the job: making sure the tournament has chosen the right kind of luxury hotel, that the food is top quality, that the changing rooms are well appointed, that the warm… .up rooms and gyms meet professional standards.

The practice courts in Riyadh are of high quality. The stadium is fit for a major event and the players have individual changing rooms with stickers of them in full flight on the walls. Top doubles player Ellen Perez posted an admiring Instagram story about the breakfast spread, which she described as the best I've ever seen at an event.

Concerns about tennis seem to have been dispelled. Concerns about Saudi Arabia's human rights record and the use of tennis to distract from it, which Muguruza and many tennis fans share, are not going away. Human Rights Watch and other similar watchdog groups have criticized the country's personal status law, which requires women to obtain permission from a male guardian to marry and obey their husbands in a reasonable manner, which can include sexual relations and can cost a woman her right to marry. financial support.

According to the country's criminal code, homosexual behavior is punishable by death. As Saudi Arabia bids to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, The Athletics has reported that 11 human rights organizations have criticized what they describe as a flawed assessment of the kingdom's human rights produced by AS&H Clifford Chance, the Saudi branch of the international law firm.

All the players have asked a lot of questions, Muguruza said.

Will we be welcome? How are we going to be treated? Is everyone welcome, including people from the LGBTQ community?

She said her travels to the country have given her confidence that everyone there will feel safe and welcome. She met several women who held positions in senior management of government and sports organizations. It was very refreshing, she said.

Everything, very normal.

World No. 2 and World No. 1 Iga Swiatek and Sabalenka after training in Riyadh (Robert Prange/Getty Images)

What Muguruza has no control over is what she says is most important for any tournament, but especially the Tour final.

How many people are coming to watch?

Muguruza said the crowd in Guadalajara played a major role in her run to the 2021 Tour Finals title and the overall success of the event. Fans there filled the stands throughout the week for day and night sessions, their noise and energy shaking the temporary stadium as locals enjoyed the opportunity to see the world's best players up close and celebrate their achievements.

For the past two years, the locations in both Fort Worth and Cancun have been largely empty. Muguruza has impressed on tour officials and local organizers how essential it is to get bums into seats. Previous WTA events in countries neighboring Saudi Arabia, such as the UAE and Qatar, have often taken place in front of small crowds. If that happens in Riyadh, Muguruza will have a substantial platform to let someone know about it.

That the stadium was full almost every session and that the crowd was involved in the tennis, in the activities, in so many things that were happening there in the city, I think that was the key, she said.

Will that happen again in Riyadh, with all the pomp and circumstance that the WTA has brought with it to crown its new era? No one knows exactly, but everyone knows that what happens has consequences that go beyond this event. Saudi Arabia's tripartite commitment to tennis, through sponsorship by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), one-off events such as the recent Six Kings Slam, and the staging of tour-sanctioned events such as the Tour Finals, is at its most coveted way came to a standstill. The most desired 1,000-tier tournament (one sport below the Grand Slams) won't happen until 2027 or 2028 and remains just an idea, with basics such as who will participate and when not confirmed.

The first of at least three WTA Tour Finals in Riyadh is a proof of concept for the parties involved, testing each other's suitability to present the version of themselves they like most to the sporting world. Not everything is very normal.

(Top photo: Robert Prange/Getty Images)