What is the Next Gen ATP Finals that everyone is talking about? ATP Tennis has a new tournament and more than the tournament itself, it’s the concept that’s quite an interesting one.
The Next Gen ATP Finals is an ATP tennis tournament that will consist of players aged 21 or under featuring in a competition that will be played at the end of the season. The tournament will have the top eight players of the world aged 21 or under featuring in a format not too dissimilar from the ATP World Tour Finals.
Seven of these eight players will qualify for this Next Gen ATP Finals based on their ATP Rankings while the eighth spot will be reserved for a wild-card entrant.
The first season of the Next Gen ATP Finals itself will be played from November 7 onward and will last five days till November 11. The Fiera Milano in Milan, Italy, will play host to this first ever tournament.
A prize money of USD 1.275 million will be on offer in this tournament.
The eight players will be divided into two groups of four apiece, which each of the players taking on the other in their own group. The top two players in each group at the end of the round-robin stage of the tournament will qualify for the semi-finals, which will then be followed by the final.
Players won’t earn any points from this competition, although the points they have in their kitty going into the competition will decide who qualifies for the Next Gen ATP Finals.
According to latest reports, the Next Gen ATP Finals will also experiment with no linesmen in the competition. Only a chair umpire will officiate the competition and all the line calls will be made by Hawk-Eye as is the case currently during point reviews.
This will be the first ever time such a concept will be tried at the highest level of tennis. Among some of the other rules that could be on display are four-game sets, no lets and a serve clock to allocate only a few seconds for players to begin serving.
Some of the players who could be on display for this competition are:
- Alexander Zverev
- Andrey Rublev
- Karen Khachanov
- Denis Shapovalov
- Borna Coric
- Jared Donaldson
- Daniil Medvedev
- Hyeon Chung
- Frances Tiafoe
- Ernesto Escobedo
Excited? We sure are about this event!