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

The WTA Tour finals in Saudi Arabia were never intended to be an under-the-radar affair.

Judy Murray, a top trainer and mother of two-time Wimbledon champion Andy, has been running training sessions. There will be events focused on women's health. A 5,000-seat stadium-within-a-stadium was built at King Saud University.

And Spain's Garbine Muguruza, two-time Grand Slam winner, former world No. 1 and bold name in tennis, is tournament director.

“She played the event, she won the event,” said Steve Simon, the executive director of the WTA Tour. “She has a unique perspective.”

When the women's tennis tour arrives in a kingdom with a history of suppressing women's rights, she has mustered all the star power she can muster along with the eight players who will make it an event. At stake is a penny, more than $15 million (£11.5 million), the entire prize money negotiated in April this year as part of 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 lift the trophy at the end without losing a match, the undefeated champion will receive over $5 million (£3.8 million) – more than any Grand Slam tournament.

Muguruza takes on the role as the WTA seeks balance for its main event after five years of turmoil, bringing its main asset to a country that has never hosted a major tennis event and because of sportswashing – the exploitation of major sporting events – was heavily criticized for embellishing his human rights record.

“We want stability,” Muguruza said in an interview on Zoom in July. In this sense, it can only go up.

In late summer 2023, the WTA Tour did not yet know where the best eight tennis players in the world would play their crowning tournament of the year. After a lengthy process, Cancun, Mexico, was chosen for an event that descended into chaos and sparked a veritable player uprising. It was raining heavily. A makeshift outdoor stadium, built in a parking lot after the roof of the chosen hall was deemed too low, creaked. Balls bounced unevenly and swirled in strong winds in front of largely empty courts.

World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka said on social media that 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: “I'm happy to play where the WTA Finals are, it's a prestigious event,” as reported last year.

The WTA said it had followed an “accelerated schedule” following the lengthy selection process to “ensure the stadium and court meet our rigorous performance standards.”

This one-off tournament in Cancun was followed by one-off tournaments in Fort Worth, Texas, and Guadalajara, also in Mexico. China has canceled a 10-year deal to host the Tour Finals in Shenzhen from 2019 to 2028. The event hosted in 2019 before the 2020 edition was canceled entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions in China led to it being moved to Guadalajara for 2021.

In November of 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 failed to materialize, the WTA suspended all tournaments in China in December. A year and a half later, the ban, which had cost the tour tens of millions of dollars, was lifted on the grounds that it had been ineffective and had damaged the sport. China responded by canceling the WTA's lucrative Tour Finals deal, costing him even more.

Muguruza won this Guadalajara event in 2021 – her last major victory as she struggled with injuries, motivation and confidence. “The WTA Finals is the final diamond of the year where the best of the best must be present and perform,” she said.

“Everything has to be ready.”

Muguruza, 31, who was keen to find ways to remain involved in the sport after retiring, said her initial discussions with the tour were about serving as a community ambassador for the event. This would have been a largely ceremonial position focused on promotional events. Then the officials came up with the idea of ​​serving as tournament director.

Simon said in an interview earlier this year that appointing a familiar face as tournament director, someone who retired within the last five years, would hopefully send a message to players that the tour would address their concerns going forward – namely long beforehand – they would have arrived.

Serving as tournament director for the Tour Finals is a little different than other tournaments, where solving the scheduling puzzle for hundreds of games can be a significant challenge. At the Tour Finals, which only feature the top eight players and doubles teams, the schedule is set in advance and everyone plays on the same court, which is indoors so the weather doesn't do any damage.

That has allowed Muguruza to deal with the more mundane aspects of the job: making sure the tournament has chosen the right high-end hotel, that the food is of the highest quality, that the locker rooms are well-equipped, that the heat and Up areas and gyms meet professional standards.

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

The concerns about tennis appear to have been dispelled. The concerns about the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia and the distraction of tennis, shared by Muguruza and many tennis fans, are not going away. Human Rights Watch and other similar watchdog groups have criticized the country's personal status law, which requires women to seek permission from a male guardian to marry and obey their husbands in a “reasonable manner,” which can include sexual relations and a woman's money could cost entitlement to financial support.

According to the country's criminal code, homosexual behavior is punishable by death. As Saudi Arabia bids to host the 2034 World Cup, 11 human rights groups have reportedly criticized what they describe as a “flawed human rights assessment” of the kingdom by AS&H Clifford Chance, the Saudi branch of the international law firm.

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

“Are we welcome? How are we treated? Is everyone welcome, including people in the LGBTQ community?”

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

“Everything, completely normal.”

What Muguruza cannot control is, in her opinion, the most important thing in any tournament, but especially the Tour Finals.

How many people will show up to watch?

Muguruza said the crowds in Guadalajara played an important role in their run to the Tour Finals title in 2021 and the overall success of the event. The fans there filled the stands day and night all week, their noise and energy shaking the temporary stadium, while locals relished the opportunity to see the world's best players up close and celebrate their achievements.

For the past two years, venues in both Fort Worth and Cancun have been largely empty. Muguruza made it clear to tour guides and local organizers how important it is to get bums on the pitches. Previous WTA events in Saudi Arabia's neighboring countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar often took place in front of small spectators. If this happens in Riyadh, Muguruza will have an extensive platform to let someone know about it.

“The fact that the stadium was full for almost every training session and that the audience took part in the tennis, the activities and so many things that were happening there during the city, I think was the key,” she said.

Will that happen again in Riyadh, with all the glamor that the WTA has brought with it to crown its new era? No one knows for sure, but everyone knows that what is happening has repercussions that go beyond this event. Saudi Arabia's three-pronged push into tennis, through sponsorship by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), one-off events such as the recent Six Kings Slam and hosting tour-sanctioned events such as the Tour Finals, is on its most coveted path to success Stuck. The 1000-level tournament (one step below the Grand Slams) that they most want will not take place until 2027 or 2028 and remains a mere idea, with basic principles such as who will enter and when unconfirmed.

The first of at least three WTA Tour finals in Riyadh is a proof of concept for the parties involved to test each other's suitability to present to the sporting world the version of themselves they like best. Not everything is completely normal.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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