00:00This is the venue for the Dubai Tennis Championships.
00:08This is where legends like Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer have come year after year
00:11to play and entertain the crowd.
00:14This is also the venue where Dubai's vast social fabric come to cheer their legends
00:18night after night for two weeks.
00:20This is where one man makes it all happen.
00:22One man who makes the tournament get the reputation that it has all over the world.
00:26His name is Salah Talaq and he is the tournament director of the Dubai Tennis Championships.
00:56It's a stressful period.
00:57I imagine you enjoy yourself a lot during these two weeks.
01:00Of course you do.
01:01Yes, we do.
01:02We all do.
01:03Because this is for us.
01:04This is the tournament of the year, the event of the year.
01:09It's like our baby.
01:12We spend a lot of time, a lot of efforts within the office before and after the tournament.
01:20Talk to us about your growth, Salah, as a tournament director for this event ever since
01:23you got the job.
01:24I started as a very junior working in the tournament and I remember that we were just
01:30dealing with getting the trophies done and coordinating with the government department
01:36within Dubai and the Dubai Civil Aviation.
01:39The curve that I went through from, let's say, from 1993 until now, it's really big.
01:45I mean, you can consider it's like a master's degree by itself.
01:49Since 2002, our EBC column, McLaughlin, gave me support and gave me, really, a trust and
01:56said, Salah, you are the Emirati, you are the first Emirati in management and I want
02:01you to be on this job.
02:02Are you ready?
02:03I said, yes, I will be ready and for me it's going to be a challenge and I'll make it happen.
02:07And then 2003, I took over and I became officially a tournament director.
02:12So for me it was really great news in 2003 and from there I really started doing my job
02:18and doing my best I could do.
02:20Given to the best tournament in the world and it's voted by the players, which means
02:23a lot of work actually goes into getting these players into Dubai.
02:27At the end of two weeks, people think the tournament is over, but actually it's not.
02:30It's actually probably beginning for you because there's a whole year of work that you have
02:34to do to bring them here.
02:36Tell us a bit about it.
02:37What do you do?
02:38You're absolutely right because for us, the work never stops.
02:41The tournament, the minute we finish 2013, the 2014 it's hard because what we do, we
02:48do a lot of post-event and then we see all the problems that we had, all the good points
02:53and the bad points, make it, compile it together, report them back.
02:57So tell us Salah, what makes Dubai so unique?
03:00A lot of factors.
03:02The main thing is that we're week nine in the ATP calendar and that makes it easy for
03:07them to come back from the Aussie Open.
03:10It's an outdoor, the weather is great here, the hospitality that we offer them is really
03:16great for them.
03:17So you're not surprised that for the last eight years, Dubai's ATP tournament here has
03:21been voted by the players as the top tournament on the ATP?
03:24Not at all.
03:25In fact, that gives us more pride and gives us more confirmation that yes, we need to
03:30do more and work harder.
03:33One person who keeps coming back to this tour, who seems to be a great friend of Dubai, is
03:37Roger Federer.
03:39What makes him so special?
03:40I mean, we know that he's a legend of the game and he's idolized by all kinds of people
03:44from all kinds of countries, but what makes him so special according to you?
03:48Roger, he's a great ambassador for the sports in general and tennis in particular.
03:53Roger considers Dubai his second home because I think he's got a beautiful apartment right
03:58on the Jumeirah Beach side and he comes here very often.
04:02He comes, I think, after every Grand Slam to practice and he thinks this is a city where
04:07it has all the facilities for the tennis player to get ready for the next tournament
04:12or to be here as a tennis player, as a professional tennis player.
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