The billionaire trying to turn Kazakhstan into a tennis nation


Casual tennis fans probably got their first glimpse of perhaps the sport’s most surprising up-and-coming power player in Wimbledon in July, when a dark-haired superfan wearing a panama hat and blue blazer hugged Elena Rybakina, the Russian-born-turned-Kazakh who won the women’s singles title.

“Incredible support,” Rybakina said of the ebullience of Bulat Utemuratov, the billionaire who invested in her game and changed her life, as she thanked him during the Wimbledon trophy presentation.

Utemuratov’s sporting pleasures are once again the focus of sport this week. Because of him, the center of the tennis universe has shifted to a mid-sized city in Kazakhstan, a country that was only nominally on the tennis map a decade ago but now has the wherewithal to attract many of the game’s biggest stars.

Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and a handful of other top players lined up this week in Astana, capital of a vast Central Asian republic, because 15 years ago Utemuratov, a Kazakh diplomat and industrialist, decided to use his generosity to transform his country into a rising tennis power.

“I liked it from the start,” 64-year-old Utemuratov said of tennis in a recent interview, although that start didn’t come until he was in his 30s.

Rybakina’s run to the Wimbledon championship title created a huge cloud of dust. Players from Russia and Belarus have been banned from participating in this year’s tournament due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rybakina, 23, was born and raised in Moscow, where her family still lives. She became a Kazakh citizen five years ago in exchange for financial support from Utemuratov and the country’s tennis federation. Transforming the former Soviet republic into a legitimate tennis nation was just part of Utemuratov’s strategy, strange as that sounded when he launched it in the United States.

His multifaceted approach could serve as a blueprint for other nations looking to get better at tennis, or any sport really, as long as they have one key ingredient – a billionaire willing to spend whatever it takes. The sports world is full of billionaires who buy teams and use them as fancy toys. Utemuratov chose to essentially buy an entire sport in his own country for now, though he’s becoming increasingly influential internationally.

Utemuratov boxed and played football and table tennis in his youth. He only started playing tennis when Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet business community took it up in the 1990s. In Soviet times, tennis was frowned upon as an elite sport. There were only a handful of tennis courts in the whole country, and playing on them was extremely expensive.

For Utemuratov, tennis was a revelation – a physical version of chess that requires versatility, intellectual ability, maximum concentration and constant athletic improvement.

Utemuratov’s tennis skills increased with his political and financial importance. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he served as both Kazakhstan’s economic ambassador to Europe and the United Nations, head of one of the leading financial institutions, and special adviser to then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev essentially ruled the country as a dictator for three decades while it worked to modernize and take advantage of its vast oil reserves.

In a country where football and martial arts reigned supreme and whose most prominent athlete is Gennady Golovkin, the middleweight boxing champion known as Triple G, tennis has barely registered. By 2007, the country’s tennis association was nearly bankrupt. Utemuratov and other business leaders discussed what they could do to save the national federation. Utemuratov, who had become a big fan of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, offered his services.

It’s a particular challenge, he said, “like starting from scratch” in a poor, sprawling country of just 20 million people spread out over an area nearly 2,000 miles wide and 1,000 miles top to bottom . Kazakhstan stretches from near Mongolia to a few hundred kilometers on the eastern border of Ukraine. Also, it’s brutally cold most of the year, and there were still hardly any tennis courts.

The Kazakh Tennis Federation used almost all of Utemuratov’s money and went on a construction tour. He invested around $200 million – almost a tenth of his estimated fortune – to build 38 tennis centers in all 17 regions of the country. It trained hundreds of coaches and instructors, importing some from Europe. It subsidizes classes for young children and teens who can exercise six days a week for $40 to $120 a month. The top juniors will receive up to $50,000 toward education and travel.

Utemuratov said making the sport affordable is important in order to change the perception of tennis from one of the elite to a game for all people. There are now 33,000 registered players at all levels in Kazakhstan. In 2007 there were just 1,800. 32 staff at the federation’s headquarters are in constant contact with 70 other coaches and staff at the tennis centers to follow the progress of promising juniors.

Dave Miley, an Irishman who led player development at the International Tennis Federation, joined two years ago to serve as Executive Director of the KTF. Miley said money alone will not produce high-level players.

As interest and participation grew and the quality of the game improved, the federation formed partnerships with academies in Spain, Italy and other established tennis countries to send its best youngsters to train there. It hosted international tournaments from young juniors to professionals.

“You only make players if you’re systematic,” he said.

That is only partly true.

Utemuratov knew that people in his country would only really embrace the sport if Kazakhstan had top professionals. And he didn’t want to wait a generation to see if the country could produce one organically.

Instead of waiting, he adopted a strategy many other countries have used to seek excellence in other sports – he began looking abroad, particularly in Russia, in search of players who had talent but weren’t successful enough to get support from the US Tennis Association there. His offer was simple: play for Kazakhstan, which shares a language and history with Russia, and the country will fund your career.

He found early customers in Yuri Schukin and Yaroslava Shvedova. Schukin never cracked the top 100, but Shvedova hit a career-high of 25th in 2012. She reached the singles quarterfinals of three Grand Slam tournaments and won doubles titles at Wimbledon and the US Open. Schukin is now one of the leading coaches in the country.

Recently, Rybakina and Alexander Bublik, another native of Russia, signed to represent Kazakhstan. The Russian Tennis Federation had essentially singled out both players, leaving them and their families to arrange coaching and access to the court on their own.

Bublik said he first met Utemuratov when he was a young teenager playing in Monte Carlo, Monaco. Utemuratov reserved a seat for several hours to play with his daughter. They finished early and Utemuratov urged Bublik to use the rest of his court time.

Bublik, 25, decided to make Kazakhstan his second home in 2016 after reaching the quarter-finals of a second-tier tournament, but with little help from the Russian Tennis Federation. With Kazakhstan funding his trip and coaching, he cracked the top 100 a little over a year later.

Many players receive money when they are young from a single sponsor who is only about to be paid back and take his share of the winnings if a player becomes successful, Bublik said last week from his third home in Monte Carlo.

“It’s his passion for him,” said Bublik, who is now 43rd. “It’s a great love on his part.”

Utemuratov, who is now a close friend, confidant and mentor of Bublik, often speaks with Bublik, although Bublik said the one subject on which he rarely takes Utemuratov’s advice is tennis strategy.

Despite Rybakina’s recent success, Utemuratov said Kazakhstan is no longer actively looking for Russian prospects.

Instead, it’s more focused on the development of players like Zangar Nurlanuly, who ranks first in his age group in Europe and this year has led his teammates to the semi-finals of the ITF U14 World Junior Tennis Finals, a Davis Cup of sorts for little fries. Utemuratov joined the team’s pitchside celebration after progressing through the preliminary round.

Utemuratov’s investment is paying off for him outside of Kazakhstan’s tennis circles. Today he is Vice President of the ITF, the world governing body of sport.

The next big step comes this week as Kazakhstan hosts a Masters 500 tournament directly below top-level tour events for the first time after years of hosting lower-league tournaments. In another first, Utemuratov said the tennis federation doesn’t have to give away tickets to fill the stands.