Backlash as Saudis land women’s finals
Navratilova slams ‘significant step backwards’
THE Women’s Tennis Association has confirmed a controversial move to bring its crown-jewel event to Saudi Arabia, with a record prize fund of £12million a year.
The kingdom will host the WTA Tour Finals — which feature the season’s top eight singles players and doubles teams — for the next three years.
The move has long been mooted and the WTA were close to taking last year’s event to Saudi Arabia, before a late switch to Cancun in Mexico. That was a disaster and there should be no repeat in Riyadh in November.
But Saudi Arabia’s restrictions on the freedom of women mean their hosting of the Finals — the highest-profile women’s sporting event to visit the region — will face a barrage of criticism.
Tennis legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova co-wrote a piece for the Washington Post in January savaging the prospect, saying ‘taking a tournament there would represent a significant step backward, to the detriment not just of women’s sport, but women’.
Russian Daria Kasatkina, the world No 11, is gay and has reservations about playing in a country which criminalises homosexuality. ‘It’s tough to talk about,’ she said last year. ‘Not everything is about money.’
But Tunisian world No 6 Ons Jabeur told UAE newspaper The National: ‘It’s great. As an Arab woman, I am proud to be part of this. It’s time to make change and I hope as women athletes we can do that and inspire women in the region and around the world.’
WTA chief executive Steve Simon claimed the move is ‘supporting significant change being made within the region’, although he admitted attracting a decent crowd could be difficult.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund recently signed a five-year deal with the men’s tour the ATP, and there are reports of a $2billion offer to merge the men’s and women’s tours.
• RAFAEL NADAL has pulled out of next week’s Monte Carlo Open, saying ‘my body simply won’t allow me’. This is the 37-year-old’s final season and, with less than two months until the French Open, he faces a fight to make it to Paris.
‘These are very difficult moments for me. You have no idea how hard it is to not be able to play these events,’ said the Spaniard, currently ranked 649 in the world.