The Volley: Is it time for the WTA to play the ATP Next Gen game?

WATCH: Brandon Nakashima is at the Next Gen ATP Finals for a second straight year, reaching the semifinals in 2021.

In the immortal words of Tyra Banks: Steal from the best, then make it your own. That is exactly what the ATP did when it launched its Next Gen Finals three years after the WTA concluded its own Rising Stars experiment. Entering its fifth year, the Next Gen Finals has not only become a must-watch event for those handicapping the tour’s hottest young talents, but has also successfully created a pipeline that turned Carlos Alcaraz from Next Gen Finals winner to major champion in under 12 months.

While the women’s tour weighs a return of its Elite Trophy, which previously took place in China and featured those who fell just short of its headline WTA Finals, might they be better served by a Next Gen Finals of their own? David Kane and Stephanie Livaudais volley it out:

David Kane: Well howdy, Steph! I haven’t come quite as far as the Ponderosa over in Cartwright City, but I do feel about as Texas tough as WTA Finals champion/cowgirl hat enthusiast Caroline Garcia, ready to take a crack at the women’s tour’s ever-evolving circuit structure.

I believe we both come into this with a good amount of (dare I say?) WTA insider cred on this one, having worked for the tour at the height of its Rising Star era—an initiative that sought to spotlight players aged 23 and under—and corresponding Invitational event that took place alongside the WTA Finals. For those blurrier on the details, what made the Rising Stars Invitational different from what we’re currently seeing the ATP put forth in Milan?

Stephanie Livaudais: Howdy, David! Or should I say ciao? As we finally approach the end of a long season, Next Gen ATP Finals provides a great opportunity to look into the future—who are the young stars that are going to dominate, and what will our sport look like in the coming years?

The Next Gen ATP Finals is a showcase that features eight of the tour’s best 21-and-under players. It was part of the Next Gen initiative the tour launched in 2016, with the goal of promoting the wave of players coming up after the Big 3. We’ve seen current top players like Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Taylor Fritz all go through the program and go on to have big success on tour.

But it also works as a sort of incubator that tests different innovations within the sport. In previous editions, we’ve seen tech like Hawkeye Live tested—which is now a staple on both tours—and mid-match coaching, which has just been phased into the ATP Tour this year.

On the other hand, the WTA Rising Stars Invitational was a mishmash of different initiatives, ostensibly to promote four of their buzziest 23-and-unders. It had a two-year run in Singapore (2014 and 2015) during the height of the tour’s Asian investment and emphasis on courting the Chinese market. It naturally focused a lot on featuring up-and-coming Asian players—Naomi Osaka and Zheng Saisai were notable participants.

Where ATP’s event goes by ranking—give or take an Italian wild card—the WTA determined its qualifiers by a fan vote…

DK: This is the Agnieszka Radwanska Fan Favorite era we’re talking about!

SL: …which, looking back, not sure if it made sense to incorporate social media, considering they were largely unknowns and had necessarily smaller followings. Nonetheless, we saw players with enthusiastic fans like Ons Jabeur and Monica Puig successfully rally the base. Future WTA Finals champion Caroline Garcia also took part.

DK: Where the WTA Rising Star Invitational, which took place as an opening act to the WTA Finals at the same venue, was more of a sideshow, the Next Gen ATP Finals has done a tremendous job of establishing itself as a main event all its own.

Its decision to focus on a narrower age group—even with the WTA’s Age Eligibility Rule shrinking the number of teen phenoms, “23 and under” cast far too wide a net—and award berths based on ranking gives the young guys making their way on the ATP circuit something for which to strive at the end of a season. After all, the tennis feeding system can prop up talented juniors only to throw them to the proverbial wolves when it’s time to go pro, putting them up against the likes of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal while their bodies and games are still developing.

The Next Gen ATP Finals, then, has become both confidence-booster and launch pad: three months after winning the title in 2017, Hyeon Chung stunned Djokovic en route to the Australian Open semifinals; 2018 Next Gen champ Stefanos Tsitsipas won the real-deal ATP Finals the following year, and we already know what became of 2021 winner Alcaraz.

But where the ATP’s field has been more striated between Big 3 and “everyone else,” has there been the same ceiling for young WTA talents?

SL: Not at all: the women’s tour has featured teenage world No. 1s and major champions since the days of Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly in the 1950s, and continuing with Tracy Austin in 70s, Martina Hingis in the 90s, and Maria Sharapova winning Wimbledon at 17. This is something the ATP only just achieved for the first time ever this year vis à vis Carlos Alcaraz, who, it goes without saying, is not the average teenager.

While there was something oddly predictive about the WTA Rising Stars Invitational—future Grand Slam champion Osaka, Olympic gold medalist Puig, and Top 5 players Garcia and Jabeur all headlined the event—the Rising Stars moniker was often arbitrary and punishing to those who achieved too much too young. In 2014, 20-year-old Eugenie Bouchard and 23-year-old Simona Halep reached major finals and qualified for the higher tier WTA Finals; Garbiñe Muguruza did the same thing in 2015. Their stars had already risen, and as such were no longer considered as part of the club.

Historically, the WTA players haven’t needed a springboard to get to the top in spite of AER rules curbing teens from over-scheduling. So in that sense, the Rising Stars Invitational felt like a product that never had a market, and that the WTA couldn’t figure out what it wanted it to be. The tour was already besieged by young stars, did they really need another spotlight? Was it an exhibition tournament or a marketing campaign? Did the results even matter?

DK: In what was perhaps too stark of an over-correction, the WTA leaned harder into a B-list Finals format with which it had been experimenting since 2009. The Tournament of Champions initially sought to highlight winners of WTA 250 (then International) titles, and became a staple of the post-season schedule through 2014. A year later, the ToC had evolved into the WTA Elite Trophy, a stricter format that awarded berths to players who fell short of qualifying for the WTA Finals proper—typically ranked between No. 10 and No. 25.

The simpler approach yielded its share of success stories, most notably Ashleigh Barty, whose 2018 victory foreshadowed her run to world No. 1 and 2019 Roland Garros title. Sofia Kenin had a similarly impressive turnaround, going from a busy fall serving as WTA Finals alternate and Elite Trophy qualifier to Australian Open champion eight weeks later.

But if the Rising Stars Invitational was difficult to market, the Elite Trophy proved even tougher: how do you hype a “race” to what was essentially a consolation prize? Some players appreciated the opportunity for more points and prize money, but others bristled at being considered a contender for Zhuhai when they were still in contention for Singapore or Shenzhen.

SL: Meanwhile, the ATP’s marketing strategy has always been clear in its goal of finding the next big thing, from New Balls Please to Next Gen. It’s taken them longer, and we’re finally seeing the investment paying off.

But now, the ATP seems to be hit by the same curse of success bug that helped kill off the Rising Stars initiative. Their young players are now leapfrogging Next Gen Finals and going straight to the big leagues: see 19-year-olds Alcaraz and Holger Rune this year. While this has occurred in past tournaments—high-profile withdrawals include future Olympic gold medalist Alexander Zverev in 2017, future Grand Slam finalist Tsitsipas in 2019 and Jannik Sinner in 2021, all of whom pulled out of Next Gen due to their qualification for ATP Finals—this is the first Next Gen ATP Finals to feel decidedly less (future) star-studded.

Is there still a need for a Next Gen ATP Finals anymore? Or have the ATP teens already arrived?

DK: The ATP is having the good problem of its feeding system perhaps working too well, but faces a potential issue in a shrinking number of young talents to fill the gap. Had Rune not enjoyed his spectacular fall surge, he would have been a logical marquee to the Next Gen ATP Finals; without him, the event faces a steeper drop off after the likes of Lorezeno Musetti and Jack Draper.

Still, with no Elite Trophy on the WTA calendar since 2019, now seems like as good a time as any to debate what may best supplement the season-ending championships.

I, for one, would be very intrigued to see the current 21-and-under set competing in a WTA Next Gen format. Looking at who would rank among this year’s qualifiers, the field is very much what the tour dreamed of when planning the Rising Stars Invitational: a mix of marketable players from multiple countries all on the brink of major breakthroughs. Top 8 youngsters Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff would have likely declined, but fans would have still gotten to see the likes of Amanda Anisimova, Zheng Qinwen, and Leylah Fernandez all competing for their share of late-season glory. While the WTA have often felt free to employ innovations directly to mainstream tournaments, I could see their Next Gen Finals as a true blue sky event, where no innovation would be off limits.

Ultimately, the ATP’s greatest triumph with its Next Gen Finals has been in its willingness to apply appropriate prestige: Next Gen matches count towards head-to-heads and players remain within the Next Gen cohort until they age out—regardless of what they go on to achieve. The WTA may have a more storied history of teen success, but that only serves as a greater incentive to spotlight them further and perhaps inspire them towards greater heights.

SL: You hit the nail on the head when you mention prestige: as we’ve learned from Wimbledon’s ranking points debacle, a tournament is only as ‘prestigious’ as a player/fan/media views it to be. If you treat something with enough gravitas, people will pick up that it’s a big deal—or at least trying to be.

But for me, the Next Gen Finals have never been a must-watch in terms of the players—and this year’s field is especially dire. I usually tune in to see those innovations you mentioned, but that might be because I’m more deeply embedded than the average tennis fan. Still, those innovations always generate a huge amount of conversation at the end of the season, so there could be a way for the WTA to incorporate this type of ‘incubator’ style into the Elite Trophy as a way to add weight to the event.

Conversely, what would an ATP Elite Trophy look like? Based on the current rankings, we’d be looking at a field that contains the likes of Matteo Berrettini, Frances Tiafoe and Jannik Sinner, with Nick Kyrgios being a potential first alternate.

DK: Pause to imagine Kyrgios showing up to any field that markets itself as a “B squad.”

SL: I’d argue there’s more of an audience for a ‘best of the rest’ type of tournament with this group, than with one featuring Draper, Musetti and Brandon Nakashima.

DK: As Tyra would say, each tour has what the other one needs!

SL: But if that’s the case, what would be the benefit to bring back the WTA Elite Trophy to the calendar as the tour seems to be considering? Or would they be better served flipping that into a WTA Next Gen? The Elite Trophy was an automatic ‘skip’ for many of the big-name qualified players, but I can envision a lot fewer young players would pass up the chance for a statement title and potential exposure in that stage of their careers.

Either way, I just don’t think there’s a need for a standalone WTA Next Gen Finals in its existing format. Too many of the potential participants are already well established players, or on their way to being, and there aren’t too many players who would want to add an extra week to the season.

DK: Perhaps this is one more opportunity for the ATP and WTA to unite; if the Next Gen ATP Finals has garnered buzz on its own, how much more would it gain as a co-ed event? Maybe throw in a mixed exo for good measure!

For my money, the more exposure tennis fans get to the game’s best and brightest, the better it is for both tours’ long-term success, and after passing the buck back and forth for the better part of a decade, the best solution for a Next Gen’s sustainability might be to double their odds with a doubled field.

SL: A "United Cup" at the start of the season, and a "United" Next Gen Finals to finish. Book it for 2024.