In Saudi Arabia, Tennis' "Kings" Bent the Knee
At the Six Kings Slam, The One Who Ruled Them All wasn't swinging a racquet.
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It was a few minutes after midnight early Sunday morning in Riyadh when the video screens inside a venue called “The Venue” showed a man looking bored. The man impatiently flopped his right hand out several times in exasperation, as if urging a dawdling waiter to bring the check faster. He then rested his head on that hand, miming falling asleep.
Kevin Skinner, the American commentator at the helm of the event’s broadcast feed, piped up with the deference, reverence, and adulation he had shown the man all week. “His Excellency, Turki Alalshikh,” Skinner reminded the viewers before spinning his boss’s visible boredom as best he could. “Yes, it’s been getting late, sir. But you set this up, and you’re getting exactly what all these people wanted. They wanted to see something epic, something memorable, something that will leave a mark on them for some time.”
The slogan of the Six Kings Slam this week was “There Can Be Only One.” This ostensibly referred to the field of six men’s tennis superstars in the draw—Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Daniil Medvedev, Holger Rune—being whittled down to one in the single elimination tournament, but anyone paying attention to the proceedings would have quickly realized that the “Kings” were all subjects, showing considerable and constant fealty to Alalshikh.
Alalshikh had shown his boredom near what should have been the climax of the event, deep into the third set of the final between No. 1 Jannik Sinner and No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz, the most scintillating rivalry on tour in recent years. Both players were playing well in the hard-fought match, with the winner set to earn $6 million in prize money.
But once Alalshikh looked bored on the big screen—which happened with Sinner leading 4-3 in the final set—it almost seemed as if Alcaraz took that as his cue to expedite proceedings. From 15-all in the next game, Alcaraz abruptly folded, hitting a double fault, a bad backhand unforced error, and then another double fault to gift Sinner a break and a 5-3 lead. Sinner then swiftly held at love to end the match as a 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-3 winner. The match had seemed deadlocked, and perhaps headed for another third set tiebreak like their recent Beijing final. But from the moment Alalshikh had registered his impatience, the players almost couldn’t have wrapped things up any quicker.
Who is Turki Alalshikh?
At the Six Kings Slam, Turki Alalshikh is truly the Reason for the Season. As chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority (GEA), Alalshikh created Riyadh Season, the sprawling annual festival which includes Six Kings as well as various other attractions from concerts to boxing matches. The GEA was created by Mohammed bin Salman, the much-discussed Saudi crown prince who is the de facto ruler of the country.
While he’s received nowhere near as much coverage as MbS, Alalshik has a pop star-sized following of his own on social media, with 28.6 million followers on Instagram—more than any of the six players he hosted this week.
Though not himself directly part of the Saud ruling family, as far as I can tell, Alalshikh is an advisor to the Saudi royal court. With a purported net worth in the low billions, Alalshikh is one of a class of Saudi rulers rich enough to play Monopoly with real buildings.
He’s been associated with some reforms in Saudi Arabia; for example, the country the year Alalshikh took control of the GEA, cinemas were legalized and reopened in the country—which was very recently, 2018! But his more visible accomplishments have been about luring various stars, brands, and properties to Saudi Arabia as part of the campaign often referred to as sportswashing.
Sports has gotten most of the attention, because the sports events staged in Saudi Arabia are most intended for worldwide audiences to tune in, but all sorts of celebrities show up. American comedian Martin Lawrence, who is performing as part of Riyadh Season, was an unexpected participant in the Six Kings trophy ceremony. As he chatted up the winner afterwards, I found myself wondering something I never expected to ponder: Has Jannik Sinner ever seen Big Momma’s House?!
How Did Tennis Stars Show Out for Alalshikh?
Tennis is a top heavy sport, and its stars are big global stars. When it came time to book a field for an event in Riyadh this year, Alalshikh got an absolute A-List field, paying each participant various sums over $1 million.
And golly, were these players eager to show how ready they were to perform on Alalshikh’s court. Not only did none of the six players came close to flaking—which is usually to be expected with an exhibition event—they all gamely participated in the most over-the-top promotional video in tennis history.
Maybe the most remarkable participation was from the oldest player: Nadal, who had additionally signed on to become an ambassador for the Saudi Tennis Federation to considerable controversy early this year, made Six Kings one of just two events on his schedule after officially announcing his retirement last week. On top of whatever appearance fees he received, Nadal was presented a gold racquet by Alalshikh in an on-court ceremony Saturday.
No other players were given such gilded gifts, but all were effusive. All six participated on Friday evening in various promotional photo opportunities around the city, showing the world what a fun town Riyadh is for six cool, casual guys.
The players were never off message. After emcee Andrew Castle wrapped up Alcaraz’s interview during the trophy ceremony, Alcaraz asked for the microphone back to make sure he could thank Alalshikh some more.
“I just want to say thank you to His Excellency, to make this event possible… thank you very much for everything you have done for the tennis, bringing it to the Kingdom,” Alcaraz said. “Thank you very much, and hope to see you soon.”
The most hyperbolic voice was in the commentary box. Kevin Skinner, the WTA world feed commentator, was consistently over-the-top in his gushing over Alalshikh and the event. At one surreal point in the second set of the final, Skinner even switched away from tennis entirely and began praising Saudi demographics before clunkily switching back to the play-by-play:
“The national population is 33 million, and Saudi Arabians are amongst the youngest by population on the planet, with approximately half of those 33 million people being under the age of 25. Youth is served in the Kingdom! 23-year-old Jannik Sinner serving to 21-year-old Carlos Alcaraz…”
Skinner will be the main voice of the WTA World Feed during their upcoming year-end championships in Riyadh, so viewers should know what to expect.
Was the Tennis at Six Kings Any Good?
Mostly, yes, actually. Because of the prize money on the table—which fascinatingly was never mentioned during the event on any of its official channels, in sharp contrast to the way prize money is foregrounded at, say, the U.S. Open—all the players put in pretty full efforts throughout, and were competitively engaged. Nadal was a shell of himself, as would be expected in this penultimate appearance of his career, but Sinner, Djokovic, and Alcaraz are all in pretty good form right now, and the two matches that featured permutations of that trio were entertaining and intense. When Sinner lost the first set to Alcaraz in the final, he angrily line-drived a ball across the court, a reaction rarely seen in an exhibition event, or from Sinner anywhere.
The part which always makes exhibition events feel hollow, though, is the lack of stakes in terms of prestige or ranking points. Even if there was money on the line in Riyadh—money that dwarfs the champion’s check at a Grand Slam—it didn’t seem like this event would mean anything anywhere beyond already large bank balances. This win, lucrative though it was, does nothing to enhance Sinner’s reputation. This was also apparent by the attendance: notable chunks of attendees in the arena left after the third-place consolation match between Djokovic and Nadal, skipping the final between Sinner and Alcaraz.
That said, Sinner had by far the best week of the field: he thrashed Medvedev in the first round, beat Djokovic yet again in the second round, and then mounted a comeback to beat Alcaraz in the final. Though the end was lackluster, winning a match of any kind against Alcaraz could be meaningful for Sinner’s confidence, after losing all three of their prior meetings this year.
“I wake up in the morning trying to understand the ways how to beat him,” Sinner said of Alcaraz in the trophy ceremony. “These kinds of rivalries and these kinds of players, they push us, always, to our 100 percent limit…”
Spotting an opening, on-court interviewer Andrew Castle pounced on Sinner’s phrasing.
“Did you just tell us that every day you wake up and you think about him?” Castle inquired, teasingly.
“Well…no,” Sinner said, awkwardly. “It would be strange, no, in one way.”
In Saudi Arabia, where imprisonments and executions for same-sex relations are still part of the country’s sharia law—and where more than 200 overall executions have taken place already this year—clarifying “no homo” can be a matter of life or death.
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Been a tennis fan all my life but with the ATP, each year I wonder if it'll be my last. Stuff like this is so gross. There is no positive gloss we can put on Nadal's decision to humiliate himself on court for easy money.