‘We hope to raise the Qatar championship to Masters’
Doha, Qatar: Secretary-General of Qatar Tennis Federation (QTF) Tareq Zeinal said that the Qatar Exxon Mobil Open is one most important ATP Tour events because of its outstanding level and the Qatari body is only happy to make it bigger.
The Qatar Exxon Mobil was again chosen as the best 250 event at the ATP awards recently.
“Qatar ExxonMobil Open is not less than any ATP 500 tournament, Zeinal told reporters, in the presence of Tournament Director Karim Al Alami.
"It’s the best in financial prizes. While some tournaments from the 250 category offer prizes $400,000, Qatar ExxonMobil Open offers prizes of up to $1.3mn.”
Talking about the raising the tier of the tournament, he said, “We hope to raise the Qatar championship to Masters level. The problem is in the crowding of the calendar; there are 9 Masters category tournaments with 1000 points. If we find any city that organises a Masters tournament and wants to sell (the rights to host), we will buy it immediately.”
The 2020 edition will be held from January 6 to 11 and Zainal said the organising committee has made sure of all the arrangements on and off the field, starting from the players' arrival at Hamad International Airport, through their stay in five-star hotels, and providing them with all the amenities at the hotel, on the field, and on all their movements, which makes the player focus only on his performance on the field.
"In all our work, we seek to promote the name of Qatar by improving the organization, which makes players, and although there is more than one championship held at the same time, prefer to participate in Qatar Exxon Mobil Open."
"Tourist sites, such as Souq Waqif, Lusail, museums, Aspire Zone, shopping malls, and the cultural village contributes to the success of our championship, in addition to the good weather," Tareq Zeinal added pointing to the world trend of sports tourism.
"In QTF, our goal is to promote the game and sports tourism, and we also keen to have our players watch these big tournaments, which motivate and encourage them to advance their performance," Zeinal said.
On the reason for changing the tournament's date from December 31 to January 6, Secretary-General of QTF Tareq Zeinal, "A year and a half ago we were in permanent discussion with the International Tennis Federation (ITF) because they created a new team championship that will be held in the same week of the Qatar Open.
"The ITF tournament has the participation of the best 24 countries participate, and the ITF only organizes this tournament annually and insists that it be held at the beginning of the calendar. The ITF gave us various options to establish our tournament, however, it was not appropriate to us."
Zeinal pointed out, "There is an agreement between QTF and ITF that the tournament will be held during the next versions on January 21 or 22 and it was agreed that this edition will be held from January 6 to 11 and next season's tournament date will change due to the organisation of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics."
About the non-participation of one of the top three players in the world rankings in this edition, Zeinal said that most of the big players are forced to participate in the national teams championship in Australia, which takes place from January 3 to 10, but despite that, the championship will witness the participation of several distinguished and well-known players.
About the Qatari participation, he pointed out that several Qatari tennis players (Musa Shannan, Rayan Al Alami, Jabr Al Mutawa, and Rashid Nawwaf) will participate in a mini-tournament among them to win one of the wild cards to participate in the main round, besides, two wild cards will be awarded to Qatari players to participate in the qualifying round.
Zainal added that the championship tennis courts have been completely prepared in terms of the safety of their floors, the underfloor heating system, and the lighting in line with international standards, also, the training courts have been prepared.
On the participation of Qatari referees, Zainal said, "The Qatar Open will witness the participation of referee Muhammad Al Mulla, who is one of the distinguished referees and participates in many tournaments even at the level of the Grand Slam tournaments. We are optimistic that he will receive the silver badge, then the gold."
