ATP Next Gen Finals: Who's in the race to Jeddah and how will the event unfold?

This article is part of our “Next Generation” series. With greats like Roger Federer, Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal now in the past and Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek in the present, Athletic We explore the next generation of rising stars who will shape the future of tennis.

Over the past seven years, the ATP Next Gen Finals has become a fixture on the tennis calendar, and when it began in Milan in 2017 it generated much excitement as both a showcase for the top eight under-21 players from the previous season, as well as an opportunity to test out different rules and innovations that might later be promoted to the main ATP Tour.

The tournament was the first to use electronic line calling and a video review system, and also featured a unique scoring system – five sets, best-of-four, with a tiebreak at 3-3 in each set – to reduce the number of games and stakes, and to encourage more games at the “decisive moments” of a set.

The rules have been slightly changed for the 2024 tournament, lowering the age limit from 21 to 20 to account for the fact that players such as Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Run made their breakthroughs earlier than was typical at the start of the tournament. When the finals began in 2017, the Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were still so dominant that players under the age of 21 rarely made an impact.

This year's tournament will also move from early December last year to Dec. 18-22, and will act as a sort of pre-season event for 2025. (Next year's season's first events start on Dec. 27 and 30.) Like last year, the tournament will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

For now, the eight qualifiers are yet to be determined, but several players are already in the lead. More broadly, the ATP Next Gen Finals is approaching a tipping point. With the Big Three gradually fading away, either through retirement or weakening their grip on the sport's biggest prize, how the event will evolve and the nature of its role within the tennis ecosystem are both open to debate. And outside of men's tennis, what are the chances of a comparable event for women, and where it might take place?

Starting with the question of who will qualify, comfortably leading the race to Jeddah is the highly talented Frenchman, Arthur Fils. The 20-year-old may not have had the breakthrough that some expected, but he's still had a year that saw him reach the fourth round of Wimbledon and win his first ATP 500-level tournament, beating Alexander Zverev on home soil in a tense final in Hamburg, Germany, two months ago.

Arthur Fiss serving at Wimbledon (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Competing for runner-up position is American Alex Mikkelsen, who lost in the second round of last month's U.S. Open to Jannik Sinner. The 20-year-old Californian has risen to a career-high ranking of 47th after a highly promising summer that included finals in Newport (Rhode Island) and Winston-Salem (North Carolina) and a quarterfinal at the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.

Following them are Shan Junchen (19, China), Jakub Mensik (19, Czech Republic) and Lucas Van Assche (20, France), all of whom have reached the third round of Grand Slams this year. Shan, known as Jerry, and Mensik are ranked in the top 70 in the world and are almost certain to play in Jeddah, while Van Assche is just outside the world top 100.

Just 79 points separate him from three other players currently in the cut zone: Brazil's Joao Fonseca (18), America's Lerner Tien (18) and Lithuania's Vilius Gauvas (19). Fonseca and Tien have both been big names in 2024 after impressive performances in Rio and Winston-Salem, respectively. Earlier this year, Tien won 28 straight matches from May through July to earn a wild card into the U.S. Open.

Joao Fonseca celebrates his Davis Cup victory this month. (Emanuele Ciancaglini/Getty Images via ITF)

The closest competitors to securing the final spot are Portugal's Henrique Rocha and Hong Kong's Coleman Wong (both in 20th place), who are just 21 and 31 points behind Gauvaz respectively.

Had the 21-year-old still been eligible, Giovanni Mpetzi-Pericardo, another promising Frenchman, and Luca Nardi, who beat Novak Djokovic at Indian Wells earlier this year, would have qualified, as would American Zachary Swejda.

Even if 21-year-olds qualify, the lineup won't be as star-studded as, say, the inaugural tournament in 2017, which featured some pretty hyped-up young players like Andrey Rublev, Denis Shapovalov, Daniil Medvedev and Borna Coric, as well as reserve players Stefanos Tsitsipas and Francis Tiafoe.

Overall, the tournament is a good indicator of future success. The winners of the Next Gen Finals have been Chung Hyeon, Tsitsipas, Sinner, Alcaraz, Brandon Nakashima and Hamad Medjedvic. Of the top four, two are multiple Grand Slam winners and future world number 1s, one has made two major finals, and Chung has even made the Australian Open semi-finals despite a scary string of injuries since winning Next Gen. Earlier this month, a video circulated from the 2019 tournament in which Sinner, alongside Tiafoe and Alex de Minaur, outplayed all three to reach the quarter-finals of the US Open. Tiafoe made it to the semi-finals, and Sinner won.

The ATP is pleased with the exposure the tournament provides to young players, with attendances being strong when it was held in Milan from 2017 to 2022. As expected, last year's edition in Jeddah was more challenging.

The idea of ​​Next Gen has become a well-established concept in men's tennis, and hosting the event every year is a way to solidify it. Innovations like a different scoring system, singles-only courts, and headsets for players to talk to their coaches give the final a unique atmosphere. An impressive list of past winners (and runners-up like Rublev, de Minaur, and Sebastian Korda) gives the tournament credibility. And as long as players progress from the Next Gen Final into the sport's top tier and don't blast past the event into the stratosphere, the ATP thinks it's worth keeping on the calendar.

There have been discussions about hosting such an event for the WTA Tour in Saudi Arabia. Athletic The reports come from a senior source who asked not to be named to protect their relationships, but nothing has been confirmed (and it's certain the event won't take place this year). The first of three WTA Finals will be held in November in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.

Going deeper

Saudi Arabia signs WTA Finals hosting deal: Background, backlash and funding

If a Next Gen type event were to take place, the WTA would have to decide what the age limit would be. WTA players generally break through earlier than ATP players because women generally mature physically sooner than men. However, currently, there are only 11 players in the top 100 under the age of 21 (9 men) and 6 under the age of 20 (4 men).

So either age group event would work well without putting players too young in the age bracket and making them feel pressured too early, although Coco Gauff obviously wouldn't play a Next Gen style event as she will be playing in the main WTA Finals.

The WTA also has a history of hosting these types of events. From 2014 to 2018, five Future Stars events were held, featuring the best young players in tennis. However, these were regional and invitational. In 2015, ahead of the WTA Finals in Singapore, four players under the age of 23 were selected to participate. The condition was that two of the players had to be from the Asia-Pacific region and the rest from the rest of the world. Nine years later, the team is very mature, consisting of a quartet of Naomi Osaka, Zhu Lin, Carolyn Garcia and Ons Jabeur. Osaka, who had just turned 18, won the tournament.

Naomi Osaka won four major titles by the age of 23. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

A modern version of the tournament would likely be hyped, as has happened at times with the men's tournament, especially if it featured a true future star like Alcaraz.

of Next Generation The series includes Chanel.

Athletic We maintain complete editorial independence: our partners have no control or opinion over the journalistic or editorial process, and they do not review stories before they are published.

(Top photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)