The 2021 WTA season will be up and running in Abu Dhabi with the first-ever WTA 500 tournament. With the Australian Open 2021 delayed, WTA was scrambling to organize an event before players travel to Australia to quarantine. Less than a month remains for the tournament, and the organizers in Abu Dhabi are running against time to arrange everything.

When, Where and Why is the WTA 500 Abu Dhabi being held?

Now, the organizers have urgently asked for ball kids for the new WTA 500 tournament. Abu Dhabi will make its debut on the WTA tour next year. So the organizers want a smooth tournament. But the organizers are concerned because it is vacation time in the UAE for children, so getting ball kids will be tough.

“We have just started midterm vacations for schools in the UAE. So getting the required 140-odd ball kids from schools will be next to impossible during this period in the first half of January.”

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The other option that the organizers have it to get ball kids from other tournaments and tennis academies in the UAE.

“The second option will be to try and bring ball kids through personal contacts and through tennis academies in other parts of the country. We have been trying our best to come to a solution in this regard.”

The tournament will be held between January 5th to 13th at the International Tennis Complex. It will be the first-ever WTA 500 tournament.

This is a part of the revamped WTA calendar which sees a similar name scheme to ATP. In the ATP calendar, tournaments are divided as ATP Masters 1000, ATP 500 and ATP 250. Similarly, WTA has also segregated its tournaments in a similar three-tier system.

Australian Open 2021 delayed

In a normal year, the first two weeks of January have pre-events to the Australian Open. But in 2021, with the pandemic still running riot, the Australian government has enforced a mandatory 14-day quarantine. Consequently, the Aussie Open has been shifted to February 8th, while the players will have to serve their quarantine after January 15th.

This frees up the first week of January, thus prompting the scheduling of the WTA 500 tournament in Abu Dhabi. But the work isn’t over yet for WTA. Due to the Australian Open in February, many other events have to be rescheduled.

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