Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have been given a helping hand at the Six Kings Slam as they have both received a bye into the semi-finals. The tournament is set to be played in Saudi Arabia in mid-October, with only six stars featuring.
Djokovic will be among the favourites to win the tournament, with Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Holger Rune also competing.
The Serbian has won 24 Grand Slam titles throughout his illustrious career but wasn’t able to add to his tally this year.
The Six Kings Slam gets underway on Wednesday, October 16 as Medvedev takes on Jannik Sinner in the quarter-finals for the chance to play Djokovic the following day.
Meanwhile, Wimbledon champion Alcaraz will go head-to-head with Rune on the opening day, with the winner of that encounter facing Nadal on the Thursday.
There is a third-place play-off on Saturday, with the final also taking place on the same day.
The Six Kings Slam was launched earlier this year, with players being handed £1.12million just for showing up. And the winner is set to land a whopping £4.5million, nearly twice as much as Sinner received when he won the US Open earlier this month.
Djokovic played in Saudi Arabia at the end of last year when he featured in the Riyadh Season Tennis Cup exhibition event. And discussing the Six Kings Slam in the spring, the Serbian said: “I am excited to return to Riyadh and play in front of all my Saudi fans.”
Nadal, meanwhile, was named as an ambassador for the Saudi Tennis Federation at the start of the year. And he exclaimed in February: “After some other tennis players have done so, I am very excited to play for the first time in Riyadh.”
Saudi Arabia has invested into a whole host of sports in recent years, with the ATP announcing a multi-year strategic partnership with the country’s sovereign wealth fund in February.
The ATP rankings as well as the year-end world number one award have both been named after Saudi’s Public Investment Fund.
The Six Kings Slam is not an ATP event, with The Telegraph reporting that the tournament has followed a ‘two day on, one day off’ schedule to ensure players don’t fall foul of ATP rules that prevent them from playing exhibition events if they last longer than two days.
Meanwhile, tournament chiefs released an epic five-minute promotional video for the Six Kings Slam earlier this weekend, which was directed by Los Perez and included scenes that could rival Hollywood blockbusters.
