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Jessica Pegula has indicated that she is open to the idea of playing in Saudi Arabia if that can lead to positive changes in The Kingdom.. This week, the ATP announced this year’s Next Gen ATP Finals would be taking place in Jeddah.
Although nothing has been officially confirmed, there have been rumors indicating that the WTA Finals will also be taking place in Saudi Arabia. While some don’t see any problem in playing in Saudi Arabia, some fear Saudi Arabia might not be the best to be staging a WTA event.
Pegula, ranked at No 3 in the world, suggests WTA players should go there if they get a chance to make a positive impact in The Kingdom.
Pegula on the possibility of playing in Saudi Arabia
“I think that if you look at a pros and cons list, we’d obviously have to see there be a lot of pros overweighing the cons to feel comfortable going there, whether that’s seeing them as a group maybe have to donate money to women’s sports or women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, to see some sort of change or action going towards helping those causes in their country.
I think that would be something really important that, if we did end up going there, we would want to see. At the same time, yeah, there’s obviously a lot of hot topics on that and issues, but at the same time if we can go there and create change, that’s also a great thing.
I think it’s just going to have to be the right arrangement and we’re going to have to know if we go there, okay, well, we want to be making a change, and you need to help us do that. If that was the case, I think unfortunately a lot of places don’t pay women a lot of money, and it’s unfortunate that a lot of women’s sports, like we don’t have the luxury to say no to some things.
Again, I think if the money was right and the arrangement was something that we could get behind where we could go and create change, then I would be okay playing there. But, yeah, I mean, we’ll see. Those are all factors that it depends on for me. We’ll just have to see how it works out,” Pegula said.
