!Sp A shorter version of this post appeared on ESPN.com yesterday.
Shahar Peer, with the winds of poetic justice firmly at her back, is on a run at the women's event in Dubai. Today the Israeli, who was denied a visa by the United Arab Emirates last year to play this tournament, advanced to the quarterfinals by upending No. 1 seed Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets.
This is storybook, headline-making stuff, but yesterday I wondered which was the more important of the news items coming out of Dubai: That Peer is playing and winning there, or that another, non-Israeli WTA player, Jelena Jankovic, has decided to move to the city and make it her home base.
It would be nice to say the former, of course. To have an athlete from Israel, whose diplomatic existence the UAE doesn’t recognize, competing in that country is a political victory that resonates far beyond the lines of a tennis court. But in many ways this victory wouldn’t have happened without a move like Jankovic’s. While the WTA and its former chief officer Larry Scott deserve credit for demanding that all of its players be guaranteed entry to the UAE this year, this wasn’t just a righteous triumph for freedom. It was also a triumph for the publicity machines of both Dubai and Doha, which have labored for years to show off the world’s top Western athletes—golfers, tennis players, racehorses—happily doing what they do best in their spectacular Middle Eastern cities, and receiving a king’s ransom to do it. The UAE, as well as Qatar, had invested too much in Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, Andre Agassi, Tiger Woods, and the WTA’s Top 8, who play their year-end championships in Doha, to let it all be scuttled by l’affaire Peer. Certainly Dubai’s title sponsor, the British bank Barclays, doesn’t need any more bad publicity at the moment. Today it was announced that the company’s two top executives gave up their bonuses in 2009 as a “tactical move” to give the bank more “moral authority” in the future. I guess in an era when the popular nickname for Goldman Sachs is "vampire squid," a 92-percent increase in profits over a 12-month period, which Barclays just experienced, leaves you with a lot less moral authority.
Either way, Jankovic, a Serb who has always been based at the Bollettieri academy in Florida, says she’s joining the desert's star-athlete brigade. “I love so many things about this place,” she said of Dubai. “The people are good and the place is lovely as I can step out anytime and practice.” This echoes sentiments shared by Federer, who has trained in the city for years, on his website. “I really like the nice climate in Dubai,” he wrote. “It’s always sunny, making it the ideal location for holidays as well as practice. I like to go shopping and eating out in the great restaurants and hotels. Dubai is a true melting pot of nationalities.”
Sounds nice, doesn't it? A perfect spot for a vacation, and there are plenty of houses and condos available from what I've heard. Besides the appearance-fee and prize-money dollars—Dubai offers the sport’s most lavish player guarantees, while Doha hosts the richest women’s tennis tournament in history—local officials have also featured the pros in some of the more jaw-dropping photo-ops of recent years. Where else can you play tennis on a towering helipad or an indoor ski slope?
Peer’s tale is approximately half of a feel-good story. In the end, it won't matter how an Israeli got to play; it’s the result, the breakthrough, that will count. If it’s money and publicity that made it happen, so be it, it’s not the first time they’ve been the driving force behind social progress. But as we're celebrating that breakthrough and her good play, we can also note a not-so-subtle difference between Peer’s description of her experience in Dubai, and the glowing, travel-brochure descriptions of Jankovic and Federer. An Israeli newspaper reports that Peer’s hotel has sealed off her floor for security reasons, and that her movement has been restricted to the hotel and the tournament site. Her upset of Wozniacki took place on Court 1 rather than the center court, because the smaller venue was easier to lock down. Still, Peer says, “The attitude to me is very warm, and I feel quite safe.”
Feeling "quite safe": I guess a true melting pot of nationalities has to start somewhere.