The Mubadala World Tennis Championships get underway on Thursday December 29th with Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer heading an all-star field.
Tennis is booming in the Middle East with two ATP events including next week's season-opener in Doha and the Mubadala World Tennis Championships appears to have established itself as the annual pre-season 'taster' event.
However this is no ordinary light-hearted exhibition. There's $250,000 prize money at stake for the winner and the field consists of six players all ranked inside the top 15. There may be no ranking points at stake but there's plenty of psychological points to be scored ahead of the action to come next month.
David Ferrer (world number 5), Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (world number six) and Gael Monfils (world number 15) make up the rest of the field.
Federer and Nadal contested the 2011 final which Nadal won 7-6(4), 7-6(3) and accordingly, the two players have byes through to Friday's semi-finals. The first round matches on Thursday will be between Djokovic and Monfils and Ferrer and Tsonga.
There's a big appetite for tennis in Abu Dhabi and the stadium is sold out for all three days.
