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

The WTA Tour Finals in Saudi Arabia was never going to be an under-the-radar affair.

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

And Spain’s Garbine Muguruza, a two-time Grand Slam champion, former world No. 1 and boldface name in tennis, is tournament director.

“She’s played the event, she’s won the event,” said Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour. “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 summoned 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 $15million (£11.5m), which was the total prize money brokered in the three-year deal between the WTA Tour and the Saudi Tennis Federation (STF) in April this year.

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 over $5m (£3.8m) — more than any of the Grand Slam tournaments.

Muguruza is taking up the role as the WTA seeks equilibrium for its marquee event after five years of turmoil by bringing its most important asset to a country that has never held a major tennis event and which has been heavily criticized for sportswashing — using big sporting events to veneer its human rights record.

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

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In late summer of 2023, the WTA Tour still didn’t know where the best eight tennis players in the world were going to play their crowning tournament of the year. After a protracted process, it selected Cancun, Mexico, for an event that descended into chaos and sparked a fully-fledged player rebellion. Rain poured. A temporary outdoor stadium, erected in a parking lot after the chosen indoor venue’s roof was deemed too low, creaked. Balls bounced unevenly and swirled in high winds in front of largely empty seats.

Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1, said on social media that she felt “disrespected.” The WTA provided players with talking points on hosting the Tour Finals in a country that criminalizes homosexuality, advising them to consider saying “I’m happy to play wherever the WTA Finals is hosted, it’s a prestigious event,” as The Athletic reported last year.

The WTA said that it followed an “expedited timeline” after the long selection process, 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 terminated a 10-year deal to stage the Tour Finals in Shenzhen from 2019 to 2028. It hosted the 2019 event before the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the 2020 edition altogether and travel restrictions in China saw it move to Guadalajara for 2021.

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 occur, in December the WTA suspended all tournaments in China. It ended the suspension — which cost the Tour tens of millions of dollars — a year and a half later, saying it had been ineffective and was hurting the sport. China responded by terminating the WTA’s lucrative deal for the Tour Finals, costing it even more.

Muguruza won that Guadalajara event in 2021 — her final big win as she struggled with injuries, motivation and confidence. “The WTA Finals is the last diamond of the year, where the best of the best has to be there and perform,” she said.

“Everything has to be ready.”

Muguruza, 31, who was eager to find ways to remain involved in the sport following her retirement, said her initial 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. Then officials floated the idea of serving as the tournament director.

Simon said in an interview earlier this year that installing a familiar face as the tournament director, someone who had retired within the last five years, would hopefully send players the message that the tour would make sure to address their concerns moving forward — and well before they arrived.

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

That has allowed Muguruza to delve into the more mundane aspects of the job: making sure the tournament has chosen the right sort of high-end hotel, that the food is premium quality, that the locker rooms are well-appointed, that the warm-up areas and gyms meet with professional standards.

The practice courts in Riyadh are of high quality. The stadium befits a large event and the players have individual locker rooms with decals of them in full flight on the walls. Top doubles player Ellen Perez posted an admiring Instagram story of the breakfast spread, which she described as the “best I’ve ever seen” at an event.

Concerns about tennis appear allayed. 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 a male guardian’s permission to marry and to obey their husbands in a “reasonable manner,” which may include sexual relations and could cost a woman her rights to financial support.

Under the country’s criminal code, homosexual behavior is punishable by death. As Saudi Arabia bids to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, The Athletic has reported that 11 human rights groups have criticized what they describe as “flawed human rights assessment” of the kingdom produced by AS&H Clifford Chance, the Saudi operation of the international law firm.

“All the players have asked many questions,” Muguruza said.

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

She said her travels to the country have made her confident that everyone will feel safe and welcome there. She encountered several women holding roles in upper management of government and sports organizations. “It was very refreshing,” she said.

“Everything, very normal.”

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What Muguruza cannot control is the thing she says is most important for 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 her run to the Tour Finals title in 2021 and the overall success of the event. Fans there packed the stands for day and night sessions throughout the week, their noise and energy shaking the temporary stadium as locals relished the opportunity to see the best players in the world up close and to celebrate their achievements.

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

“Having the stadium full almost every session and having the crowd involved in the tennis, in the activities, in so many things that were happening over there during the city, I think it was the key,” she said.

Will that happen again in Riyadh, with all the splendor the WTA has brought with it to coronate its new era? No one quite knows, but everyone knows that what does happen has ramifications beyond this event. Saudi Arabia’s tripartite push into tennis, through Public Investment Fund (PIF) sponsorship, one-off events like the recent ‘Six Kings Slam,’ and hosting tour-sanctioned events like the Tour Finals, has stalled in its most coveted lane. The 1000-level tournament (one rung below the Grand Slams) it wants most will not happen until 2027 or 2028 and remains a mere idea, with basic principles like who participates 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 for presenting the version of themselves they like most to the sporting world. Not everything is very normal.

(Top photo: Robert Prange / Getty Images)