Behind the scenes at a World Tennis Masters event with Carmen Necula
We have once again gone behind the scenes to bring you closer to the action and showcase exactly what a World Tennis Masters Tour event is like – on and off court.
The overriding message is that you can experience this too because World Tennis Masters is for everyone and provides the opportunity for people to achieve their goals irrespective of age, background or profession.
As an extension to our Day in the Life content series, we recently travelled to Greece with Carmen Necula of Romania as she competed at MT400 Thessaloniki Macedonia.
The 43-year-old, who lives in Bucharest, had previously contested World Tennis Masters events in Romania, but this was her first taste of international competition – and it did not disappoint.
Take a look as Carmen not only competes on court but immerses herself in the wider event and samples the attractions of Thessaloniki, embodying the founding principles of Masters Tennis.
Masters Tennis has always been about travel opportunities, healthy competition, camaraderie and a sense of achievement as much as the tennis. Masters Tennis very much enables people to play, progress and belong.
You may recall we travelled to Manavgat in Turkiye last year to spend time with Great Britain’s Seb Jackson and give you a real flavour of Masters Tennis as he competed at a MT1000 event. We have since learnt that people have started playing Masters Tennis after watching the video.
For context, an MT1000 event like the one Seb played is one of the highest graded tournaments on the World Tennis Masters Tour, reflecting the number of ranking points on offer and the strength of the field.
An MT400, which Carmen featured at, is further down that scale, reinforcing the fact that Masters Tennis caters for all regardless of background or ability.
In short, we would like many more people all around the world to pick up a racket and play tennis. Indeed, World Tennis wants to achieve ambitious new levels of global participation – and we are targeting a 30 per cent increase in the numbers playing tennis by 2035. If we achieve that, it means 140 million people across the world are playing.
As part of Advantage All, our gender quality strategy, and through our President David Haggerty being a UN HeForShe Champion, World Tennis is also committed to closing the gender gap in terms of participation.
The 2024 World Tennis Global Tennis Report concluded that the percentage of women tennis players across the world was down from 47 per cent in 2019 to 40.3 per cent. This was despite the overall number of women and girls playing the game increasing.
The latter trend has also been witnessed on the World Tennis Tour Masters Tour. Since 2021, there has been year-on-year increases in the number of women featuring on the Tour, rising to a record 10,598 in 2025.
In the last three years, the proportion of women players has also increased from 24 to 33 per cent – but the desire is to close the gap further. And Masters Tennis really is a great way of playing tennis – for both men and women – while also enjoying the Tour's wider benefits.
The World Tennis Masters Tour provides competitive playing opportunities for amateur players from the year in which they turn 30 right through to 90 and above, with tournaments taking place in more than 70 nations.
So, if you love the game, enjoy competitions but have other commitments in your life, the Tour may be for you. There is likely to be a tournament, which incorporates singles, doubles and mixed doubles competition, close by.
Why not see for yourself how rewarding Masters Tennis can be? Find out more – and sign up – here.