{"id":53579,"date":"2022-12-18T10:09:34","date_gmt":"2022-12-18T15:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=53579"},"modified":"2022-12-18T10:09:34","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T15:09:34","slug":"world-tennis-league-what-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/12\/18\/world-tennis-league-what-you-need-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"World Tennis League &#8211; What You Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The latest of yet another extravagant tennis exhibition tournament will kickstart the festive season in the Middle East as Dubai hosts the inaugural World Tennis League. The event, dubbed the &#8220;Greatest Show On Court,&#8221; will run from December 19-24 featuring 18 players. So let us take a closer look at match details, format, and players involved.<\/p>\n<h2>When does the tournament start?<\/h2>\n<p>The World Tennis League will commence on Monday, 19th December. It will be played on hard courts at the lavishly-constructed Coca-Cola Arena which has a capacity of converging up to 17,000 fans. Tickets won&#8217;t come cheap with a season pass <a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldtennisleague.com\/#gety\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">costing upwards of $400<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Who will be playing?<\/h2>\n<p>It is a mixed-gender tennis tournament that brings 18 of the very best tennis players, including <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/07\/10\/novak-djokovic-nick-kyrgios-seventh-wimbledon-21st-grand-slam\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">21-time Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/09\/10\/iga-swiatek-beats-ons-jabeur-us-open\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">WTA #1 Iga Swiatek<\/a>. Four franchised-owned teams will play each other in a round-robin format, with the top-two scoring teams facing off for the championship on Saturday.<\/p>\n<h2>Teams<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Eagles<\/strong>: Nick Kyrgios, Caroline Garcia, Bianca Andreescu, Rohan Bopanna, Andreas Seppi<\/p>\n<p><strong>Falcons:<\/strong> Novak Djokovic, Aryna Sabalenka, Grigor Dimitrov, Paula Badosa<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hawks:<\/strong> Alexander Zverev, Elena Rybakina, Dominic Thiem, Anett Kontaveit<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kites:<\/strong> Felix Auger-Aliassime, Iga Swiatek, Holger Rune, Sania Mirza, Eugenie Bouchard<\/p>\n<h2>Tournament format<\/h2>\n<p>Each team will consist of at least four players. There will be a singles men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s match, and a mixed-doubles match each day between the two teams. Matches will be best-of-three contests with a 10-point tiebreak for the third set.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 1:<\/strong> Kites vs Eagles<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 2:<\/strong> Falcons vs Hawks<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 3:<\/strong> Falcons vs Eagles<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 4:<\/strong> Hawks vs Kites<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 5:<\/strong> Eagles vs Hawks<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 6:<\/strong> Falcons vs Kites<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 7:<\/strong>\u00a0 Final (TBC)<\/p>\n<h2>What the players have said<\/h2>\n<p>Djokovic, who is the biggest star attraction during the week, could not contain his delight. In an Instagram post, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/CmKUYJNv_91\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;ig_rid=0467a21a-a8a3-458a-846a-1bc271ba32f2\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the Serbian star said<\/a>, &#8220;Hello, tennis fans around the world. A big tennis event is coming up in Dubai \u2014 World Tennis League.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m very excited to be a part of the league for the first time along with my teammates from Team Falcons&#8211;Grigor Dimitrov, Aryna Sabalenka, and Paula Badosa. I&#8217;m looking forward to sharing some great moments with you guys on the court and off the court as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic is slated to play Australia&#8217;s Nick Kyrgios on day two of the event. And the Aussie is keen to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/07\/10\/novak-djokovic-nick-kyrgios-seventh-wimbledon-21st-grand-slam\/\" target=\"_self\">atone for his Wimbledon loss<\/a> in July. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/ClX335ROZVt\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;ig_rid=2eb9cf41-e593-4cc8-9f0e-994d5c6c9910\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kyrgios said<\/a>, &#8220;I cannot wait to be part of the WTL. The team that has my eye is definitely Novak and the Falcons. I can&#8217;t wait to come against them and I can guarantee an Eagles win. But for now, all tie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest of yet another extravagant tennis exhibition tournament will kickstart the festive season in the Middle East as Dubai hosts the inaugural World Tennis League. The event, dubbed the &#8220;Greatest Show On Court,&#8221; will run from December 19-24 featuring 18 players. So let us take a closer look at match details, format, and players [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":53364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3,2,4],"tags":[18425,597,887,1766,3553,406,208,5595,291,1219,411,7605,4315,209,22,12171,9923,9906,18426],"class_list":["post-53579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-atp","category-featured","category-wta","tag-alexannder-zverev","tag-andreas-seppi","tag-anett-kontaveit","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-bianca-andreescu","tag-caroline-garcia","tag-dominic-thiem","tag-elena-rybakina","tag-eugenie-bouchard","tag-felix-auger-aliassime","tag-grigor-dimitrov","tag-holger-rune","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-nick-kyrgios","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-paula-badosa","tag-rohan-bopanna","tag-sania-mirza","tag-world-tennis-league"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}