Former world No 1 Andy Roddick has reacted to the news that a new ATP Masters 1000 tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia as early as 2028.<\/p>\n
The 2003 US Open champion has revealed how the Saudi Arabian event being non-mandatory could be financially beneficial to players as he also predicted where it will fit into the calendar.<\/p>\n
It was confirmed on Thursday that the ATP Tour<\/a> had agreed the formation of the new Masters 1000 tournament with SURJ Sports Investment, a company owned by Saudi Arabia\u2019s Public Investment Fund (PIF).<\/p>\n The Saudi Arabian Masters will join the nine existing ATP 1000 tournaments, marking the first expansion of this category of event since it was introduced in 1990.<\/p>\n It has been revealed that the tournament will be non-mandatory, and the singles main draw will feature 56 players and be played over a single week. The Monte Carlo Masters is the only current ATP 1000 event which is not mandatory.<\/p>\n The exact calendar position that the new Saudi event will occupy is yet to be confirmed, as is the venue.<\/p>\n How Carlos Alcaraz has proven he \u2018doesn\u2019t play for money\u2019 \u2013 Serena Williams\u2019 former coach<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Paris Masters tournament director reacts to Novak Djokovic\u2019s withdrawal<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Speaking on his Served podcast, Roddick broke down the financial implications of the non-mandatory status of the Saudi Arabian Masters and declared that there will be \u201cchaos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe protection for the Masters 1000s not to have to pay the players directly is that they\u2019re mandatory and you basically opt in to the tour schedule as an independent contractor,\u201d said Roddick.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mandatory events basically hold your participation as a negotiating tool and you have to fall in line with the mandatory things. If it\u2019s non-mandatory, that means that you do not have to play it, contractually, to be a part of the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n \u201cThat means appearance fees. These appearance fees are going to be massive and the players have a lot of leverage right now, because there\u2019s no chance that Saudi is going to want to have this Masters 1000 and then not have Sinner and Alcaraz show up, and then not have whoever else show up, right?<\/p>\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve been texting with an agent friend of ours who has been on the show before. He says, \u2018absolutely open season on appearance fees for this tournament.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cNon-mandatory, to me, they\u2019re celebrating that as like, \u2018Oh, listen, we\u2019re coachable, this is cool, we\u2019re going to just create a new set of rules.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThis is going to be chaos. This is going to be the Wild West as far as appearance fees, which is good for the players I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n During the same podcast, Roddick weighed in on how the new tournament will impact the ATP Tour calendar.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are only two options. One, this is obvious. I have a lot of questions about it. As far as where the calendar goes, pre-empting Australia is what some people are saying. I think that\u2019s difficult,\u201d said the 32-time ATP Tour titlist.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure you can take the thunder\u2026 Australia is probably the only thing in tennis that benefits from people actually having time to look forward to it. Otherwise, it\u2019s just a run-on sentence. Also, if you do that, then are you shifting the entire Middle Eastern swing to before that?<\/p>\n \u201cOr are you screwing over the other Middle Eastern tournaments in February, before Indian Wells? I think it has to slot into that February, because then who are you competing with?<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re competing with Rotterdam, you\u2019re competing with those tournaments, which seems like an easier competition than the lead-up to Australia. There\u2019s no way, if [Australian Open tournament director] Craig Tiley has a say in this, that it cruises in before Australia, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Saudi Arabia ATP Masters 1000 key information: Format, start date, and where it fits into the calendar<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Why Carlos Alcaraz & Jannik Sinner can demand \u2018massive\u2019 fees to play Saudi Arabian Masters: Andy Roddick\u00a0<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former world No 1 Andy Roddick has reacted to the news that a new ATP Masters 1000 tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia as early as 2028. The 2003 US Open champion has revealed how the Saudi Arabian event being non-mandatory could be financially beneficial to players as he also predicted where it will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Andy Roddick\u2019s reaction to the Saudi Arabian Masters event<\/h2>\n
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Tennis News<\/h2>\n
What Roddick said about appearance fees at the Saudi Arabian Masters<\/h2>\n
Roddick on the possible schedule positions for the Saudi Arabian Masters<\/h2>\n