Salah Tahlak, tournament director of Dubai Tennis Championsh was appointed to the board of directors of the Dubai Sports Council (DSC) in 2005. In 2009, he was named 'Young CEO of the Year' at the annual Middle East CEO of the Year Awards.
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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.