The ATP Tour has announced it will host a new Masters event in Saudi Arabia from as early as 2028.
In a statement, the ATP said the new tournament would join the existing nine Masters events in the first expansion of the category in its 35-year history. The ATP did not say when the tournament would be held, with the venue and dates of the event yet to be announced - but a new Masters event would likely require a reshuffle of its calendar and schedule - which has been criticised by players in recent weeks.
The new tournament marks Saudi Arabia’s biggest move into men’s tennis, having hosted the WTA Finals for the first time last season and the ATP’s NextGen Finals, featuring the top-ranked players under the age of 20, since 2023.
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) became the official naming partner of the world rankings in February 2024, with the ATP and PIF announcing a “multi-year strategic partnership” that involved investment into several major tour events.
The creation of a new Masters, the highest level of tournament outside of the four grand slam events at the Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open, has felt inevitable since then, while Saudi Arabia has hosted top men’s players including Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic in the lucrative Six Kings Slam exhibition worth an overall $6m for the winner.
The Saudi Arabia Masters will join the existing nine tournaments in Indian Wells, Miami, Monte-Carlo, Madrid, Rome, Canada, Cincinnati, Shanghai and Paris. Seven of the nine Masters tournaments are currently played across as 12-day format, with only Monte-Carlo and Paris the exceptions, while the length of the events has proved controversial and unpopular with some leading players.
Top-10 players Jack Draper and Taylor Fritz called on the ATP to change its schedule following a horror injury suffered by Holger Rune at last week’s Nordic Open, while Alcaraz agreed with Iga Swiatek’s assessment that the season was “too long and too intense” shortly before withdrawing from the Masters in Shanghai.
The chairman of the ATP Andrea Gaudenzi told some reporters that the Saudi Arabia Masters would feature 56 players, last one week and would not be mandatory. Gaudenzi also told reporters that the tournament could be played after the Australian Open in February, at a time in the season that currently stages events in nearby Doha and Dubai.
