In a thinly veiled warning that could portend an increasingly nasty battle between two of the most powerful entities in tennis, the owners of the Australian Open have notified the leadership of the men’s tour that they would consider any attempt to schedule a tournament in Saudi Arabia during the first week of the season as a request for a potential “breach” of an existing contract between the two organizations.
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Tennis Australia sent the message last week, in a letter notifying the ATP Tour that it had decided not to bid to host the proposed event. However, the Australians also used the letter, a copy of which The Athletic has reviewed, to outline their staunch opposition to the ATP Tour’s plans. They sought to make it clear that the tour should seriously consider the consequences of its efforts to disrupt a professional tennis calendar that now kicks off entirely in Australia and New Zealand, headlined by the United Cup, a mixed-team international event that began last season and attracts some of the top players in the world.
“Tennis Australia has an existing agreement with the ATP and the WTA for the United Cup in Week 1, which is active through 2029 with options to extend,” Jayne Hrdlicka and Craig Tiley, the chair and chief executive of Tennis Australia, wrote in the letter dated April 24. “The players value the event, as does Tennis Australia.”
“We do not enter agreements lightly and neither do we take lightly being asked to breach an existing agreement.”
The letter is the latest salvo in a 10-month battle that began as a fight about the start of the season but has turned into a duel over control of the sport between the Grand Slams and the ATP and WTA tours.
The Grand Slams favor a streamlined elite tennis tour with 14 events, including the Grand Slams, that keeps in place a schedule that climaxes four times a year with their tournaments, both geographically and in terms of the court surfaces. The existing ATP and WTA tours are trying to maintain something like the status quo, only more of it, with one more big tournament and some more money, thanks to a significant investment from Saudi Arabia, which is vying to become the host of that tournament.
The battle has dominated off-the-court conversations and turned what had, for years, been largely polite interchanges among the eight entities that oversee the professional game into a fierce, existential fight for control of the sport and the billions of dollars it produces.
It is playing out at a crucial moment for the game as it transitions from two decades of growth thanks, in large part, to stars such as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams, who have retired or are on the way there.
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With all their careers ending in the coming years, the sport’s leaders know they need to market a new generation of stars and make it easier for fans to make sense of the hundreds of tournaments that happen each year while also meeting player demands for a schedule that does not overtax their bodies and allows them to share in the sport’s riches the way elite athletes in other realms do.
At the moment, the fight over the start of the season is the primary battleground.
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In the letter to the ATP, Tiley and Hrdlicka, who announced in February she would step down as the chief executive of Virgin Australia Airlines, argued that maintaining the schedule is in the best interests of the health and financial wellbeing of the players and the sport. There’s also the matter of the massive financial windfall and media interest that it provides for its organization in the run-up to its signature event.
“We have worked hard to establish an Australian January as one of the most lucrative months of the year for the players,” Tiley and Hrdlicka wrote. They argued that the warm-up events to the Australian Open, including the United Cup, allow players to get into peak condition for one of the four biggest events of the year as most of them adjust to the Southern Hemisphere and a radically different time zone.
“The Australian Open cannot be moved,” they wrote, “so having an event in another geographic region — with an eight-hour time zone difference, different climactic conditions and a 15-hour flight — is clearly damaging to player preparation for a Grand Slam.”
They added that the current format allows fans to easily digest the start of the year and suggested that starting in Saudi Arabia, with a tournament one level below a Grand Slam, would only add to fan confusion. Under that proposal, the players — and the watching tennis world — would head to Saudi Arabia, then head to Australia, then head back to the Middle East in February for existing tournaments in Doha and Dubai.
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“As a sport, our goal should be to simplify the structure of the tour in the eyes of the fans, dramatically improve the fan narrative and better leverage the Grand Slams to drive viewership of the tour. All of that is compromised with an event in Week 1 — hurting our ability as a sport to better remunerate the players.”
The ATP has said little of its plans regarding the specifics of the new tournament, which is likely to begin in 2027. The request for bids did not specify the exact timing of the tournament but rather stated that it would be held during a 60-day window in January or February. The new tournament is a significant part of its plans to bring what it has said could be roughly $1billion of new investment into tennis.
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The leaders of the women’s circuit, the WTA, have largely been in lockstep with the ATP in its efforts to head off the effort from the Grand Slams to create the slimmed-down premium tour, which would lessen the importance of the vast majority of ATP and WTA tournaments. However, a new men’s event in the first week that threatens the viability of the United Cup — which offers a combined prize money pot of $10million — would jeopardize one of the most lucrative events of the year for female players.
The WTA did not participate in the request for proposals for a new tournament, under which Saudi Arabia stated its interest in hosting a Masters 1000 for men and women. The owners of the top women’s tournaments would have to approve such a move, and the WTA does not see an open spot in its calendar. It does not want to ask its players to play more than they already do.
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Three people who participated in the discussions, who have spoken on condition of anonymity to describe the private talks, said the bickering about the first week of the season has been a fight for leverage in the larger battle about whether to create a premium tour.
The ATP, with the tacit approval of the WTA, is unwilling to abandon the possibility of holding the new tournament in January until the Grand Slams promise not to devalue tour events by creating a new premium tour. Tennis Australia and the other three Grand Slams are unwilling to give up the push for the premium tour without an assurance that the ATP and WTA will not disrupt the current rhythm of the schedule.
There is an obvious compromise, the people say — holding the new Masters 1000 in February, after the Australian Open. However, with tensions still rising, the environment is not conducive to reaching a middle ground.
(Top photo: Colin Murty/AFP via Getty Images)
