ATP Next Gen Finals: Who’s in the race to Jeddah? And how will the event evolve?

This article is part of the Next Generation series. While greats like Roger Federer, Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal become the past, and Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek rule the present, The Athletics explores the next generation: the rising stars tasked with securing the future of tennis.

Over the past seven years, the ATP Next Gen Finals have established themselves on the tennis calendar. There was a lot of excitement when it started in Milan in 2017, as a way to showcase the eight best players aged 21 and under from the previous season, while trying out different rules and innovations that could then progress to the main ATP Tour.

The tournament was the first to use electronic telephony and a video judging system, while the scoring system is unique: five sets of the first through four games, with a 3-3 tiebreak in each set. The idea is to have fewer games with lower stakes, and more games on the ‘business side’ of sets.

The rules for 2024 have been slightly adjusted, with the age limit now 20 instead of 21, in recognition of the fact that players such as Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Rune have achieved their breakthrough earlier than was usual at the start of the tournament. When the finals started in 2017, when the Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were still so dominant, it was rarer to see players making their mark at 21 or younger.

This year’s event will also have a different time slot, moving from early December last year to December 18-22 – meaning it will act almost as a pre-season event for 2025 (with the first events of next year’s season starting on December 27 and December 30). Like last year, the tournament will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

For now, the eight qualifiers remain unknown, but several players are already in a strong position. More broadly, the ATP Next Gen Finals is approaching a turning point. The slow absence of the Big Three, either through retirement or loosening their grip on the sport’s biggest prizes, leaves questions as to how the event will evolve – and the nature of its role within the tennis ecosystem – for discussion. And how likely is an equivalent event outside of men’s tennis, and where could it happen?

Starting with the question of who will qualify, the man comfortably leading the race to Jeddah is the hugely talented Frenchman Arthur Fils. The 20-year-old may not have exploded as quickly as some expected, but it’s still a year in which he reached the fourth round of Wimbledon and won his first ATP 500-level event – ​​beating Alexander Zverev in the home leg of the German. country in a thrilling final against Hamburg two months ago.

Arthur Fils serves at Wimbledon. (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Next in the race is American Alex Michelsen, who was defeated by Jannik Sinner in the second round of the US Open last month. The 20-year-old Californian is on his way to a career-high ranking of No. 47 after a hugely promising summer that saw him reach the finals in both Newport, Rhode Island and Winston-Salem, NC, as well as the quarters at the Citi Open in Washington , DC

Behind them are Shang Juncheng (19, from China), Jakub Mensik (19, from the Czech Republic) and Luca Van Assche (20, from France). All three of these players have reached the third Grand Slam round this year. Shang, better known as Jerry, and Mensik are in the top 70 in the world and quite safe to make it to Jeddah, while Van Assche is just outside the top 100 in the world.

Below him are the three players currently in the qualifying places, separated by only 79 points. They are Joao Fonseca from Brazil (18), the American, Learner Tien (18) and the Lithuanian Vilius Gaubas (19). Fonseca and Tien have each received plenty of attention in 2024 for standout results in Rio and Winston-Salem, respectively. Earlier this year, Tien went on a 28-match winning streak between May and July, earning him a wildcard into the US Open.

Joao Fonseca celebrates during a Davis Cup victory this month. (Emmanuele Ciancaglini/Getty Images for ITF)

The players closest to one of the final qualifying spots are Portugal’s Henrique Rocha and Hong Kong’s Coleman Wong (both 20). They are only 21 and 31 points behind Gaubas respectively.

If 21-year-olds were still eligible, another exciting Frenchman, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, and Luca Nardi, who beat Novak Djokovic in Indian Wells earlier this year, would be in the qualifying spots. Just like the American Zachary Svajda.

Even if those 21-year-olds were eligible, it still wouldn’t be a great lineup compared to the first edition, which in 2017 featured Andrey Rublev, Denis Shapovalov, Daniil Medvedev and Borna Coric – all youngsters who put in quite a performance had delivered. little buzz around them. The same applies to the two alternates Stefanos Tsitsipas and Frances Tiafoe.

Overall, it was an event that was a good indicator of future success. The winners of the Next Gen Finals are Chung Hyeon, Tsitsipas, Sinner, Alcaraz, Brandon Nakashima and Hamad Medjedovic. Of those first four, two are multiple Grand Slam winners and future world number 1s, one is a two-time major finalist and even Chung has an Australian Open semi-final to his name, despite a horrific series of injuries since his Next Gen title. Earlier this month, a video of the 2019 event made the rounds, showing Sinner alongside Tiafoe and Alex de Minaur, ahead of all three competing in the US Open quarter-finals. Tiafoe reached the semi-finals; Sinner won the whole thing.

The ATP is pleased with the way the event has showcased young players, with a solid attendance in Milan when it was held there between 2017 and 2022. Unsurprisingly, Jeddah was more challenging last year.

The idea of ​​a Next Gen has become well-established in men’s tennis, and hosting an annual event is one way to reinforce that. The different scoring system, singles court and innovations such as headsets that allow players to talk to their coaches give the final a distinctive feel. The impressive list of former winners (and runners-up such as Rublev, De Minaur and Sebastian Korda) gives it credibility. And as long as players move from the Next Gen Finals to the pinnacle of the sport, and don’t jump straight past the event into that stratosphere, the ATP sees it as a valuable spot on the calendar.

There have been discussions about hosting such an event during the WTA Tour in Saudi Arabia. The Athletics has been told by well-placed sources who wish to remain anonymous to protect relationships, but nothing has been confirmed (and there certainly won’t be an event this year). The WTA Finals will be held in the Saudi capital Riyadh in November for the first of three editions.

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Should a Next Gen-style event take place, the WTA would have to make a decision on what the age limit should be. WTA players tend to break through more quickly than ATP players, partly because women generally mature more physically than men. However, as it stands, there are only eleven players aged 21 and under in the top 100 (nine among the men) and six players under the age of 20 (four among the men).

So an event for both age groups could work well without it having to be too young an age group that can feel like too much pressure too quickly. That said, Coco Gauff would obviously skip a Next Gen-style event as she would qualify for the main WTA Finals.

The WTA also has some history of organizing these types of events. Between 2014 and 2018, there were five editions of the Future Stars event, showcasing some of the best young talent in the game. However, these were done per region and by invitation. In 2015, ahead of the WTA finals in Singapore, four players aged 23 or younger were selected to participate. The parameters were that two of the players had to be from Asia-Pacific and the others from the rest of the world. Nine years later, the roster has aged excellently, with the quartet consisting of Naomi Osaka, Zhu Lin, Caroline Garcia and Ons Jabeur. Osaka, who had just turned 18, won the event.

Naomi Osaka won four major titles at the age of 23. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

A modern equivalent would likely generate a lot of excitement, as has intermittently happened in the men’s event. Especially when real future stars like Alcaraz are involved.

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(Top photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)