Maybe I was wrong last week. Maybe the more things change in one part of the world, the more they stay the same somewhere else. A few days after Jo-Wilfried Tsonga became the first black player to win an ATP tournament in South Africa, Israel’s Shahar Peer, as you surely know by now, was denied a visa into the United Arab Emirates so she could play in the WTA’s Dubai event this week.
This seems to be the straw that has finally broken the . . . ok, it’s no time for desert-animal puns. The point is, both tennis tours and their players have known about this problem even as they have relied on Dubai and nearby Doha for more and more revenue—in the form of prize money and, in particular, appearance-fee money—over the last five years. Peer was allowed to play in Doha last year, but fellow Israelis Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich were mysteriously kept from entering Dubai in 2008, despite expressing a desire to become the first players from that country to compete there. From what Doug Robson of USA Todaywrote at the time, it sounded like the UAE and the tournament didn’t want them there, but also didn't want to have to come out and say that. With Peer, they came out and said it.
WTA chairman Larry Scott has taken a lot of heat for not canceling this week’s tournament outright, so much so that he’s begun to make noises about rethinking his tour’s relationship with the UAE in the future—that’s a first as far as I know. It’s a tough situation for him. He’s received a lot of positive reviews as WTA chief, based mainly on his ability to shore up the tour financially. But one of his financial coups came in moving the season-ending championship to Doha, while the women’s event in Dubai, like the men’s, has become another high-profile advertisement for the UAE’s tourism industry.
It was only a matter of time before the image of a desert utopia was punctured, both culturally and economically. It may not be a coincidence that Peer’s rejection is happening at the same time that Dubai’s economy is in free fall and some foreign residents are now saying it was a "con game" all along. The question now is, what relationship should tennis, and especially its players, have with the country. The actual political issue may be too thorny for a sport or its athletes to express opinions on—I’d never ask any of the top men or women to go down the rabbit hole of Israel-Gaza, or Israel and its relationship with its Muslim neighbors. The relevant issue is that the tours at their most basic level are players' unions, and their first duty is to secure safe places to play for all of their members. It’s clear now that Dubai isn’t one of those places. So far the comments from the other top women players—in essence, “we support her”—have been lame. Of course they support her, but what will they do, or sacrifice, to show that support for a peer? (I’m allowed one pun here, right?)
Next week it will be the ATP’s turn. As of now, it looks like Andy Ram’s visa will not be granted by the UAE. The player with the highest-profile relationship with Dubai is Roger Federer. While the other top men who come to the city to receive their guaranteed paydays next week should not be absolved from speaking out about Ram or Peer, Federer trains in the area, spends the most time there, and has talked about how much he likes the place. This is how he describes Dubai on his website:
*Q: You spend a lot of time training in Dubai. What are some of your favourite things to do there?
A: I really like the nice climate in Dubai. It is always sunny, making it the ideal location for holidays as well as practice. I like to go shopping and eating out in the great restaurants and hotels. Dubai is a true melting pot of nationalities, so it’s a very interesting place in terms of the people you meet.*
Federer is on the ATP’s player council now, and has spoken out about various issues from drug testing to the schedule (he wants more time to play in the Middle East). Most important, everyone in tennis listens to what he has to say—his early suspicions about former tour chief Etienne de Villiers made it that much tougher for him to earn the trust of other players. Like I said, Federer is not going to solve the problems of the Middle East. But he owes it to all of his fellow players to say something substantive about Dubai and its policies toward those players. If he likes it so much, he should want all of them, whether they’re paid a king’s ransom or not, to have a chance to play there.