ATP Next Gen Finals: Who will be heading to Jeddah? How will events unfold?

This article is part of the Next Generation series. As greats like Roger Federer, Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal become a thing of the past and Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek deal with the present, Competitor Discover the next generation: the rising stars tasked with securing the future of tennis.

The ATP Next Gen Finals has carved a permanent place on the tennis calendar for the past seven years. When it started in Milan in 2017, there was a lot of excitement as a way to showcase 8 of the best players aged 21 and under from the season that just ended, while trying out different rules and innovations that could potentially lead to upgrades to the major ATP Tour tournaments.

This tournament uses electronic line calling and video judging systems for the first time, and the scoring system is also very unique – four rounds in total, five rounds in total, and each set uses a 3-3 tie-break. The idea is to reduce the number of games with lower stakes and add more games on the “business side” of the game.

The rules have been tweaked slightly for 2024, with the age limit changing from 21 to 20, in recognition of players such as Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Rune achieving earlier than the start of the tournament Breakthrough facts. When the 2017 Finals began, the big three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic still dominated, with few players aged 21 or under making their mark.

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

Currently, eight qualifiers are still unknown, but several players are already in strong positions. More broadly, the ATP Next Gen Finals is approaching an inflection point. With the Big Three slowly absent, whether through retirement or losing control of the sport’s biggest prize, how the tournament will evolve – and the nature of its role in the tennis ecosystem – is up for debate. How likely is it that a similar event will happen in women’s tennis, in addition to men’s tennis?

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Starting with the question of who will qualify, the man comfortably leading the race in Jeddah is the talented Frenchman Arthur Fels. The 20-year-old may not have exploded as quickly as some expected, but this year he has reached the fourth round of Wimbledon and won his first 500-level ATP event – on the German’s home turf. Having beaten Alexander Zverev two months ago, Germany competed in a tense final in Hamburg.

Arthur Fells plays for Wimbledon. (Greenkirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Next up is American Alex Michelsen, who was beaten by Jannik Sinner in the second round of last month’s US Open. The 20-year-old Californian is coming off a promising summer, with finals in Newport, R.I., and Winston-Salem, N.C., and the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.

Behind them are Shang Juncheng (19 years old, from China), Jakub Mensik (19 years old, from the Czech Republic) and Luca Van Assche (20 years old, from France). All three players have reached the third round of a Grand Slam this year. Jerry and Mensik are both ranked within the top 70 in the world, making it a pretty safe bet to enter Jeddah, while Van Assche is just outside the top 100 in the world .

Below him are the three players currently in qualifying, with just 79 points separating them. They are Brazil’s Joao Fonseca (18 years old), American Learner Tien (18 years old) and Lithuania’s Vilius Gaubas (19 years old). Fonseca and Tenn attracted widespread attention with notable results in Rio and Winston-Salem, respectively, in 2024. Earlier this year, Tian won 28 consecutive matches between May and July, earning a wild card to the U.S. Open in the process.

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

The players closest to the final qualification are Portuguese player Enrique Rocha and Hong Kong player Coleman Wong (both 20 years old). They are only 21 points and 31 points behind Gaubas respectively.

If the 21-year-old still qualifies, another exciting Frenchman, Giovanni Mpetesh-Pericad and the man who beat Novak Djokovic at Indian Wells earlier this year Odd Luca Nardi will enter the qualifying round. The same is true for Zachary Svajda of the United States.

Even if these 21-year-old players are eligible, compared with the first class in 2017, which included Andrey Rublev, Denis Shapovalov, It’s still not a star-studded line-up compared to Daniil Medvedev and Borna Coric – all these youngsters have put in pretty good performances. There was some buzz around them. Likewise, two substitutes, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Francis Tiafoe.

Overall, this was an event that bodes well for future success. The winners of the Next Generation finals are Chung Hyeon, Tsitsipas, Sinner, Alcaraz, Brandon Nakashima and Hamad Medjedovic. Of the first four players, two are multiple Grand Slam winners and future world No. 1s, one is a two-time Grand Slam finalist, and even Zheng has reached the Australian Open semi-finals, despite having won the Since becoming the Next Generation champion, he has endured a series of horrific injuries. Earlier this month, a video of the 2019 event circulated, showing Sinner competing in the U.S. Open quarterfinals alongside Tiafoe and Alex De Minaur. Tiafoe made it to the semifinals; Sinner won the whole thing.

The ATP is pleased with the exposure the tournament provides young players, with stable attendance when it was held in Milan from 2017 to 2022.

The idea of ​​the next generation has become an established concept in men’s tennis, and hosting an annual event is one way to cement it. Innovations such as different scoring systems, singles venues and headsets for players to talk to coaches give the finals a unique feel. An impressive list of former champions (as well as runners-up like Rublev, De Minaur and Sebastian Korda) lends it credibility. As long as players can progress from the Next Gen Finals to the top echelon of the sport, rather than directly transcending the event to reach the highest level, the ATP will see it as having a place in the calendar.

There have been discussions about hosting such an event on the WTA Tour in Saudi Arabia, Competitor Sources have revealed that they wish to remain anonymous to protect the relationship, but this has yet to be confirmed (there certainly won’t be such an event this year). In November, the WTA Year-End Finals will be held in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh for the first of three editions.

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If a “next generation” type event takes place, the WTA will have to make a decision on age limits. Typically, WTA players break through faster than ATP players, in part because women are generally more mature than men. But as it stands, there are currently only 11 players aged 21 and under in the top 100 (9 in the men’s group) and 6 players under the age of 20 (4 in the men’s group).

Therefore, activities that target any age group can work well without making it too young, which may feel too stressful. That said, Coco Gauff will apparently skip the Next Gen style event as she will be eligible to compete in the WTA Finals.

The WTA also has a history of hosting such events. Between 2014 and 2018, five Future Stars events were held, showcasing the best young talents in football. However, these are done by region and by invitation. In 2015, before the WTA finals in Singapore, four players aged 23 or younger were selected to compete. The parameters are that two of the players must be from the Asia-Pacific region and the other players must be from other parts of the world. Nine years later, the lineup has become very mature, a quartet composed of Naomi Osaka, Zhu Lin, Caroline Garcia and Ons Jabr. Osaka, who just turned 18, won the event.

Naomi Osaka won four Grand Slam titles at the age of 23.

A modern equivalent could generate a lot of excitement, as the men’s event has done intermittently. Especially when a true future star like Alcaraz is involved.

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(Above: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)