After months of playing shots off the back foot, the four Grand Slam tournaments have gone on the offensive in the battle for the future of the tennis. 

In meetings with representatives of the men’s ATP and women’s WTA tours last week in London, and with players and agents this week in Madrid, leaders of the Grand Slams have presented their strongest plan yet to reform the current structure of professional tennis. It consists of a premium tour anchored in the four Grand Slams and more top-level combined events, featuring the best players from the ATP and WTA circuits.

According to a person briefed on the proposal from the Grand Slams and the ensuing meetings, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, the details include the following:

• Doubling the prize money for the top 300 men.
• ⁠Almost quadrupling the prize money for the top 300 women.
• Using a portion of their own media rights to finance these changes.
• Equal pay, from inception, for men and women at all the events on the premium tour, instead of making women wait until 2027 to receive the same pay as men at some of the biggest tournaments.
• A schedule that includes the four Grand Slams, plus 10 other mixed top-level tournaments, with locations and dates to be determined, and a team event.
• The tour…

Welcome to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the story behind the stories from the last week on court.

This week, the European clay swing kicked off in earnest across the ATP and WTA tours, with tournaments in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Romania. The four best women’s players faced off in Stuttgart, Barcelona witnessed the return of Rafael Nadal, and we saw a serve from zero gravity.

If you’d like more tennis coverage, please click here.

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Are the WTA and ATP tours swapping their metas?

For the past year, there’s been some chatter about a ‘Big Four’ forming in women’s tennis. It was a ‘Big Three’, comprised of Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka, but then Coco Gauff won the U.S. Open and became a seriously consistent presence in the business end of tournaments, including the semi-finals of the Australian Open. She also climbed to No 3 in the rankings. At the same time, the rapid emergence of Carlos Alcaraz, succeeded by the slower burn of Jannik Sinner, Daniil Medvedev being Daniil Medvedev, and the elastic continuity of Novak Djokovic forged new rivalries on the ATP tour.

The last few months have thrown a wrench into that thinking. Despite being without a Grand Slam title since last year’s French Open, Swiatek…

Former world number one Garbine Muguruza has confirmed her retirement from tennis with immediate effect.

The 30-year-old, born in Venezuela, announced her decision at a press conference in Madrid on Saturday.

“I feel I am ready to retire, to open this new chapter in my life. A new era, a new life,” she said.

“I was nervous, wanting to say it. I feel good, even if the word retired is a bit strong,” she said.

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She retires as the second-most successful female Spanish singles player of all time, behind Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who won four singles Grand Slams.

Muguruza defeated one of the Williams sisters for both of her Grand Slam titles, at the time becoming only the second tennis player born in the 1990s to win a Major.

She defeated Serena in the 2016 French Open as part of a run of 14 consecutive sets won, having lost to her in the previous year’s Wimbledon final. She then defeated Venus at the 2017 Wimbledon — including a final set bagel — before spending four weeks at world number one later that year.

Muguruza has frequently described the Williams sisters as “role models” for her career since she was growing up, not just in terms of the standards they…

A little more than a month ago, a series of meetings of the top leaders of tennis ended in acrimony. The heads of the Grand Slams accused the leaders of the tour of undercutting their efforts to reshape the sport by plotting a series of backchannel deals with Saudi Arabia.

Now, another summit is about to get underway. 

After weeks of virtual discussions The leaders of the Grand Slams and the men’s and women’s tennis tours will convene in London this week to try to forge some sort of compromise that will solve a series of challenges facing the game.

Those problems essentially boil down to this:

How can they bring more money into tennis and grow interest amid increasing competition, without overtaxing players who are demanding a streamlined schedule and compensation comparable to their far wealthier counterparts in other sports?

The ultimate solution, people connected to the discussions say, could even spell significant changes or perhaps even the end of the Paris Masters — a top indoor men’s tournament known as ‘Bercy’ — in favor of a new event in Saudi Arabia.

At the most recent summit with the sport’s top leaders, Gilles Moretton, the president of France’s Tennis Federation, the FFT, which owns the French Open and the Bercy tournament, said he would not let…

Katrina Adams had a fair bit of success when she was a top doubles player during the 1980s and 1990s.

She won the NCAA doubles title in 1987, then went on to win 20 doubles titles on the pro tour and reached the quarterfinals or better in doubles at all four Grand Slam events. Pretty good. Winning never gets old, but Adams, the first Black person to lead the United States Tennis Association, experienced a different sort of satisfaction recently when she got a call from the International Olympic Committee and learned she was being named its ‘Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ Champion for 2023.

The GEDI Champion, previously known as the Women and Sport Award, recognizes the work of a person or an organization in opening up sports to lesser-served groups, something that was a hallmark of Adams’ tenure running the USTA.

“Thrilled, honored and humbled,” Adams, who grew up in Chicago and attended Northwestern University, said of the award, though she very quickly made it clear she never set out on this path for the acclaim. “The work that I do is not to be recognized or to be receiving awards for it. It’s because it’s from the heart. These are things that I believe in.”

No one would argue with that. As a vice-president at the International Tennis Federation,…

For more than a year, the leaders of tennis have been trying to gauge just how serious Saudi Arabia is about getting involved with tennis. 

Was the country prepared to mount a takeover and start buying off players, as it did in golf, or was it merely content to hold an exhibition or two? Or perhaps something in between? 

There is now little doubt that the country and its sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), are intent on pursuing a broad push into the sport at every level. The leaders of the Saudi effort have shifted their attention to working with the top officials in tennis on selling their plan to the public, and they are determined not to let entrenched interests, and even some of the biggest names in the sport, stand in their way. 

Saudi Arabia has offered roughly $1billion (£1.3bn) in investment in the sport in exchange for hosting major events — a move that has now become a part of the emerging chess game between the organisers of the Grand Slams and the men’s and women’s tours, in which the sport’s leaders are battling to control tennis.  

Among Saudi Arabia’s next steps are finalizing and announcing the pending deal to host the WTA Finals, the end-of-season tournament that features the top-eight players — but several of the…

A lot — a LOT — has been happening in the world of collecting the past couple weeks; so much, in fact, that it necessitated the first ever “Memorabilia Notebook.” Will it continue? Probably. Maybe. We’ll see!

In this episode:

• Alexis Ohanian tells us about how he collects his wife’s cards. His wife is Serena Williams.
• We bought a DunKings jacket and now don’t know what to do with it.
• Jason Kelce’s Funko Pop! sells out, but is missing something (not just his shirt)
• PSA gave us a list of the most graded NFL cards so far this year
• Gary Vee has a plan for toothpaste
• Leaf is set to release the best Reggie Jackson card ever
• Ohtanimania drives up Dodgers’ bobblehead night ticket prices

Let’s get to it!

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Alexis Ohanian tells us about his Serena Williams collection

On Tuesday, the new collectibles site Mantel officially launched. Full disclosure: it is helmed by our former co-worker Evan Parker and we got early access to mess around with it and give some feedback. In exchange we got… a virtual badge. Thanks, Evan!

In the early days of beta testing, a crazy post popped up, but to fully appreciate it you had to read between the lines and know a little pop culture and history. Someone noted that a Serena Williams SI For Kids card, with a PSA 10 grade, sold for $117,000 on…

Another day, another incursion by Saudi Arabia into major professional sports.

The country’s General Entertainment Authority announced on Monday that a tennis event it is calling the “6 Kings Slam” will take place this October in Riyadh and feature Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz.

The event will be an exhibition and not count for points or be a part of the men’s ATP Tour, but the participation of three of its biggest stars is yet another sign that Saudi Arabia is willing to pay top dollar to attract top tennis talent. Jannik Sinner, Daniil Medvedev and Holger Rune, will round out the field. Rune is the only player involved who has not won a Grand Slam title.

Djokovic has won 24. Nadal, who announced last month that he had signed on to become an ambassador for Saudi Arabian tennis and work to develop the sport in the kingdom, has won 22. Alcaraz has won two and Medvedev and Sinner, who recently dueled in the Australian Open final, have each won one.

The announcement comes as Saudi Arabia is nearing a deal to begin hosting the WTA Tour finals, which is the season-ending championship of women’s professional tennis. The deal is expected to be announced this month, barring a last-minute change of heart by the…

Barring another last-minute pivot, the women’s professional tennis tour is preparing to announce that the season-ending WTA Tour Finals will take place in Saudi Arabia, marking the latest step in the country’s huge investment in elite sport.

WTA Tour chief executive Steve Simon has been holding talks with Saudi officials for the past year and if a deal is agreed, the 2024 finals will take place there at the end of the season, according to several of the sport’s top officials. The WTA has been here before, though, as recently as last summer, when it was close to a deal with Saudi Arabia but pivoted at the last minute amid public pressure.

In a statement on Thursday, a WTA spokesperson said the process is ongoing, with the intention of a final decision and announcement later this month.

“As everyone knows, we are working through a process to select a host venue for the WTA Finals,” they said. “There has been no final decision and we will continue to engage with players through the ongoing process.”

The Athletic has contacted Saudi representatives for comment.

One top tennis official, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak for the WTA, called the potential deal with Saudi Arabia “the worst kept secret in the sport.” The WTA is said to…

Saudi Arabia is attempting to rebuild its image and prepare for a world without oil — and sport is a key part of its strategy.

Although other nation-states have exerted influence on global sport in the past, we have never seen anything as comprehensive as Saudi Arabia’s vast investments in a multitude of different sports over the past few years.

Saudi Arabia’s smaller neighbour Qatar hosted the 2022 men’s football World Cup and many other competitions, but Saudi has even more cash to splash and limitless ambitions in doing so. This may be a lifeline for some sports, but for critics, this is all an exercise in sportswashing, a distraction from the country’s terrible human rights record.

As reported by The Athletic, the women’s professional tennis tour is preparing to announce that the season-ending WTA Tour Finals will take place in Saudi Arabia, marking the latest step in the country’s huge investment in elite sport.

So which sports are already receiving Saudi money — and which ones might be next?

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Football

Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought Newcastle United in 2021 after years of legal wrangling. The club has spent over £400million on transfers since the takeover, a figure that would likely be considerably higher were it not for the Premier League’s…