United Cup: Tournament director Stephen Farrow eyes Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner next year

United Cup tournament director Stephen Farrow wants to land Novak Djokovic, Carloz Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner for next year’s event — and believes a later start next season could entice the star trio. Farrow also declared he was happy with attendances at RAC Arena for this year’s event and said feedback received from stars who graced the court in Perth was excellent. Despite the absence of Serbian superstar Djokovic and Australian no.1 Alex de Minaur this year, Perth crowds witnessed 2023 US Open champion Coco Gauff, men’s world no.4 Taylor Fritz, dual grand slam finalists Alexander Zverev and Stefanos Tsitsipas and former Wimbledon winner Elena Rybakina in action. World no.1 Sinner and world no.3 Carlos Alcaraz are just 23 and 21 years-old respectively, but have already won six majors between them and are at the vanguard of the post-’big three’ era of men’s tennis. Neither of them have played the United Cup yet and although Farrow praised Perth’s line-up this year, he has been vocal about the tournament not resting on its laurels. “When you say going bigger and better, we’re talking about Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic; Novak played last year, it was in the balance as to whether he was going to play this year,” Farrow told The West Australian. “We have an entry deadline in the middle of October, that’s something we could potentially look at — could we go a bit later, which gives us less time to promote the event but gives more opportunity for someone in Novak’s situation time to think. “We would hope that both Jannik and Carlos would play the event next year, and will certainly be talking to them about it.” This season’s United Cup began on December 27, the earliest time an official ATP or WTA tournament has started the season since the Australian Open moved from December to January in 1987. Only on three occasions did the Hopman Cup start earlier than December 28, in a short spell from 1989-91. Farrow conceded this season’s start date was not ideal and although it did not dissuade players from travelling down under this season, next season’s event will start in January. “Jannik and Carlos, neither of them have played an event this week; I would obviously love it if they played and think they would love it if they played,” he said. “The vagaries of the tennis calendar is such that if you look at the long-term calendar, we’ve got a pretty clear idea what that’s going to look like over the next 10 years or so and we’ll never be as early as we are now. “Next year, we would start on January 2, and that would be much better for us. It gives us more time to promote and people who are away between Christmas and New Year are back in the city for the event.” While crowds were down this season without Djokovic and de Minaur, Farrow said he was expecting a drop in attendances and they were still well above the infamous opening iteration of the tournament in 2022. “If you actually look at the numbers overall each day, we were averaging about 10,000 people a day,” he said. “We had 8500 for USA vs Canada, which was a genuinely a really special atmosphere, a special night for the competition to have four great players competing for it, going down to the mixed doubles. “That was why we created this competition: for nights like that, in that brilliant arena with great players and a great crowd. “We saw a huge spike of interest once these stars started appearing in Perth; people tend to buy tickets quite late.” Farrow said the feedback around the facilities in Perth and competition atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive and once again, the quokka selfies proved a hit. “It’s not a lie and we say this every year, absolutely every single player and every single team wants to go to Rottnest to see the quokkas,” he said. “It’s not quite a full-time job, but not far off it, arranging for players to go out there.”