Tsitsipas on never participating in the South American swing: Middle East offers more lucrative appearance fees

In his capacity as the tournament's defending champion, Tsitsipas was ousted by France's Humbert at the ATP 500 Dubai this week. Facing the imminent loss of his championship points, the Greek player is poised to fall outside the Top 40 next week, a position he hasn't been in since May 2018.

File photo of Tsitsipas

In a recent interview with CLAY, Tsitsipas revealed the reason for his absence from the February South American clay-court season. Throughout his career, he has never competed in the three clay events in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. While participating in these tournaments would be a sensible move for Tsitsipas, given his strong clay-court abilities and current urgent need for points, he candidly admitted that he has never received an "ideal offer" from these South American events compared to those in the Middle East.

"The tournaments in South America have never presented me with a sufficiently attractive offer (appearance fee) to seriously consider playing, while the Middle East has always been very generous with appearance fees, and European events also provide quite good offers. This disparity is crucial," Tsitsipas stated. "To put it bluntly, from a financial perspective, my choice of other tournaments over South America is entirely understandable. All players select events based on monetary incentives; that's how the tennis economy operates."

"South America possesses that desirable passion for tennis, but I've had to set it aside. When the financial gap is so significant, you really have no choice but to prioritize the options that better support your career. I genuinely desire to play there; visiting South America has always been a dream of mine, and I've heard there are many wonderful things."

Looking at this week's situation, Dubai and Acapulco are both ATP 500 events with equal ranking points, but the champion's prize money in Dubai is nearly $200,000 higher ($619,160 compared to $461,835). It is also believed that Dubai offers substantially higher player appearance fees. Among the current Top 20 players, 13 are competing this week: seven in Dubai, five in Acapulco, and one in Santiago (an ATP 250 event).

(Compiled by Wang Fei, Photo/VCG)