Women tennis players unsure as Riyadh touted as possible WTA Finals host

Tunisian tennis star Ons Jabeur has said she would be happy to see the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Finals played in Saudi Arabia. Other players are not yet so sure.

The season-ending championship for the top women's players has been on the move in recent years. A site has yet to be announced for this year, though there is speculation the event could land in Riyadh.

"We have not made any decisions yet on WTA Finals location," a tour spokeswoman wrote to the Associated Press on Friday.

"As with all decisions regarding the future of the WTA, we are working closely with players and focused on continuing to build a strong future for women’s tennis."

Jabeur, the first African or Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam final and last year's US Open runner-up, said she went to Saudi Arabia last year and believes things are improving for women. Saudi Arabia has, in recent years, enacted wide-ranging social reforms, including granting women the right to drive and largely dismantling male guardianship laws that had allowed husbands and male relatives to control many aspects of women’s lives.

"For me, I was trying to push to have something, tennis, there in Saudi. I think it’s a great step. I think it’s something that could help the Arab world to have more tennis players, to get more involved in sports," Jabeur said.

"Yeah, if they play there, and hopefully if I qualify, it will be a great honour and opportunity for me to go and play there, especially meeting a lot of women. They told me they look up to me. That would be a great opportunity for me to meet them and speak to them."

Yet, even as the government has enacted top-down reforms, it has severely cracked down on any form of political dissent, arresting women’s rights activists and other critics and sentencing them to long prison terms and travel bans, sometimes on the basis of a few social media posts.

American Jessica Pegula said she would perhaps want to see a donation to women's sports or women's rights causes before being assured it was the right decision.

"I think that would be something really important that, if we did end up going there, we would want to see. At the same time, yeah, there’s obviously a lot of hot topics on that and issues, but at the same time if we can go there and create change, that’s also a great thing. I think it’s just going to have to be the right arrangement and we’re going to have to know if we go there, OK, well, we want to be making a change, and you need to help us do that.

"I think, unfortunately, a lot of places don’t pay women a lot of money, and it’s unfortunate that a lot of women’s sports, like, we don’t have the luxury to say no to some things. Again, I think if the money was right and the arrangement was something that we could get behind, where we could go and create change, then I would be OK playing there."

Saudi Arabia is set to host the men’s tennis tour’s Next Gen ATP Finals in Jeddah through 2027 under an agreement announced Thursday. WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon said in June that he and some players had visited in February for an evaluation process that is still ongoing.

The event was played last year in Fort Worth, Texas, and had originally been expected to return to China this year. Top-ranked Iga Swiatek was disappointed that an announcement hadn't been made already.

"It would be great, yeah, if the decision were made earlier," she said. "Especially when we were in Fort Worth, they kind of assured us the decision is going to be made at the beginning of the year. It is a little bit annoying, but as players there’s nothing we can do, because it’s all about business and negotiations that WTA has, so we kind of have to wait."