Saudi Masters planned one week before Australian Open

The ATP Tour is in discussions with Saudi Arabia to stage a new curtain-raising Masters tournament that would finish only one week before the Australian Open.

Novak Djokovic, in action at the Australian Open in January, is among the players tipped to play in Riyadh. Picture: Michael Klein

The ATP Tour is in discussions with Saudi Arabia to stage a new curtain-raising Masters tournament that would finish only one week before the Australian Open.

From 2025, stars such as Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz could open the year in Riyadh, rather than Brisbane and Sydney, if the tour approves a radical change to the way in which the schedule starts. The proposed investment from Saudi Arabia would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The change would leave only one week between the Saudi Masters and the Australian Open, which is the first grand-slam tournament of the season. There is an eight-hour time difference between Riyadh and Melbourne.

Several sources have said that the proposal is being floated between ATP chiefs and representatives of the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth pool.

Meetings will be held during next week’s ATP Finals in Turin to decide whether this is a feasible option for the tour. The ATP has declined to comment but the chairman, Andrea Gaudenzi, confirmed this year that he had held “positive” talks with Saudi officials over the possibility of a partnership.

In August it was confirmed that the ATP’s Next Gen Finals, a season-ending event for players aged 21 and under, would be held in Jeddah in December as part of a new five-year deal.

As seen in other sports such as golf, football and boxing in recent years, the PIF is eager to attract the best sportspeople in the world to Saudi soil. A deal for an ATP Masters event would guarantee this in tennis as it is part of the mandatory tier of tournaments second only to the grand-slams.

While Saudi officials are also keen to host tournaments for female players, it is unlikely at the moment that this curtain-raiser would be a combined event.

The WTA is eager to attract investment from the PIF but the season-ending WTA Finals is seen as the most probable option as it searches for a new venue after a shambolic week in Cancun, Mexico.

A Saudi Masters would decimate the early stages of the Australian swing. It is likely that the United Cup, a mixed-team event held across Brisbane, Perth and Sydney, just before the Australian Open, would be killed off unless a new date were somehow found for it.

Smaller ATP 250 tournaments held during week one of the season, such as the Brisbane International, are also at risk. This could be disastrous for Australian tennis chiefs as the present swing of events down under builds local and national interest leading into the Australian Open. Tennis Australia was contacted for comment.

Logistically, a Saudi Masters will heavily affect player preparations for the Australian Open. A likely Saturday finish in Riyadh on January 4, 2025, would leave only eight days before the action is due to begin at Melbourne Park on Sunday, January 12. With a time difference of eight hours between Riyadh and Melbourne, jet lag would have to be overcome quickly after the 15-hour flight.

Warm-up tournaments could be held in Australia during week two between January 5 and January 11 – the Adelaide International, for example – but the strength of the entry lists would almost certainly be affected by the quick turnaround in travelling from Riyadh. Many of the top players are likely to prefer to focus on practice rather than match play.

The possibility of the Australian Open moving back a week is slim. Organisers have always maintained their reluctance to do so because of its present slot in the summer school holidays. The 2025 tournament is due to finish on January 26, two days before children in Melbourne return to school.

The willingness of the ATP to revamp the early-season schedule to shoehorn in a Saudi Masters shows how desperate the governing body of the men’s tour is to prevent a breakaway equivalent forming, as has happened in golf through the emergence of LIV.

There are two scenarios, then, that could lead to the launching of a Saudi Masters. The ATP could facilitate the creation of a 10th Masters tournament licence that the PIF could use its considerable wealth to bid for. To give a sense of how much these are worth, the former owner of the Madrid Masters, Ion Tiriac, sold his licence to the IMG sports company for about $650m in 2021. The alternative option would be to purchase one of the nine existing Masters licences.

There is little expectation that many of the players will have issues competing in an official event in the kingdom because of how other sports have opened up to Saudi investment.

Djokovic and Alcaraz have both signed up this year to play each other in a Riyadh exhibition on December 27, a day after Aryna Sabalenka (the present WTA Tour No 1) and Ons Jabeur (No 7) go head to head at the same venue.

It is expected that at least $13m of prize money would be offered in line with other comparable Masters events, with almost $2m going to the singles champion.

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