Salah Tahlaq, is dreaming big. He wants to make the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships big enough to give Wimbledon a run for its money.
Salah Tahlaq is a man with big ideas for the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships. Despite a number of disappointments this year — with Maria Sharapova pulling out of the tournament for medical reasons and Serena Williams unable to play due to an injury — the tournament director remains upbeat and charismatic about the future of the championships in Dubai.
With the championships growing larger and more popular every year, organising the event must be a challenge.
Tahlaq said: "It is difficult to organise the championships, but you just have to have the right recipes of all the things around you. When we started the tennis here, there was just a small court with scaffolding, and we only had three side-courts, plus a centre court.
"Now we have a centre court, plus nine side-courts. You need to make sure that you can secure players, offer them the courts, the hospitality, the transportation and a hotel that's close to the stadium."
As the man behind the tennis championships, Tahlaq has big plans for expansion of the current site, as well as the possibility of moving the tennis to a brand new site.
"We've been building, and every year we add something different," Tahlaq explains. "We've expanded to include more seating this year and yes the tickets have sold out, but that's not enough because we want more and more people to come and watch. I think two years down the road we will have a five-star hotel on site. It should be ready by 2010 and it will be easy for the players to walk from their rooms to the stadium," he said.
Traffic woes
Many players, he continues, hate to sit in traffic on the way to a game, so building a hotel right on the courts' doorstep is the ideal solution. Overlooking Dubai Creek, the five-star hotel will be nine storeys tall with a good view of the Dubai skyline.
This year the director has seen many of the tennis players walking to the stadium over the footbridge, constructed with the help of the RTA. It's proving popular, he says, and although the main car park holds 750 cars, the additional 500 spaces on the other side of Garhoud has proved essential.
With the tennis growing ever-popular, the likelihood of a new tennis venue being established is stronger than ever.
"We might move the tennis somewhere else, because this place is too congested now. We've been offered two areas to look at, one of which is a piece of land given by the Government for the tennis and the rugby. This site will house 10 rugby pitches and a tennis stadium with 10 side-courts and would be in the new Dubai area, around Dubailand," Tahlaq said. "So there's a couple of proposals we're looking at, and we'll have to see which one fits well with the tennis."
Grand designs
Although the Dubai Tennis Championships are comparatively small when looking at Wimbledon or the open championships, Tahlaq isn't going to let this hold the tournament back.
"It would be my dream to have a championship as big as Wimbledon," he enthuses. "The Middle East has great tennis already. With every tournament we are spending more money, putting in a lot of effort to bring more players in and build more facilities. I think it should be as big as other championships — why not? It should be like a fifth or sixth Grand Slam. That's my dream."
