Qiddiya Tennis and Golf Venues: How to Take Up the Sports

Saudi Arabia is building two of the region's biggest new places to play sport, and both sit within reach of Riyadh. At Qiddiya City, the giga-project rising against the Tuwaiq Mountains, Qiddiya Investment Company has unveiled a National Tennis Centre with 30 courts, and beside it an 18-hole championship golf course designed by Sir Nick Faldo. The headlines are about seat counts and world tours, but the more useful question for anyone reading this in the Kingdom is simpler. If you want to actually take up tennis or golf, how do you begin, and what does your body need to be ready for it?

What Qiddiya is building

The National Tennis Centre, designed by the global sports-architecture firm Populous, will hold 30 courts in all, 28 hard and two clay, built to full ATP, WTA and ITF specifications so it can host the professional tours. Its show courts are large: a 15,000-seat Centre Court with a retractable roof, an 8,000-seat multi-purpose arena, a 5,000-seat Court One and a 2,000-seat Court Two, for a total capacity of around 33,000. Alongside the match courts sit indoor and practice courts and a high-performance training centre with recovery, hydrotherapy, physiotherapy and wellness facilities.

Qiddiya Investment Company chief executive Abdullah Aldawood called it a world-class home for tennis at every level, meaning it is meant for grassroots players and community sessions as much as for elite competition. That intent matters, because it is the difference between a venue you only watch and a venue you can imagine using. Next door, the Faldo-designed golf course is an 18-hole championship layout set into the Tuwaiq foothills, and Qiddiya City has become a global partner of the Faldo Series, the youth-golf pathway that gives young Saudi players somewhere to progress.

Why this is more than a construction story

All of this sits inside a wider national push to get more people moving. The Saudi Tennis Federation has said it wants to inspire one million people in the Kingdom to take up tennis by 2030, and points to a schools programme that it says has already introduced tens of thousands of children to the game. New courts and courses only pay off if people walk onto them, so the honest takeaway is not to wait for a ribbon-cutting. You can build the fitness and the basic movement a sport needs long before a venue opens, using a gym you already have access to.

Taking up tennis: the base to build first

Tennis looks like an arms game and is really a legs game. A point is a series of short, sharp bursts: a few explosive steps, a change of direction, a stop, a reset, then the same again. The base that serves a beginner best is footwork and agility, the stamina to repeat those bursts without fading, and enough general strength and core control to swing and brace safely. None of that needs a court to build.

A simple way in is two or three short sessions a week: skipping and lateral shuffles for quick feet, a handful of short sprints with full recovery for the burst, and basic strength work for the legs, core and shoulders. Our exercise library is a good place to learn the movements with proper form before you load them, and short HIIT sessions build exactly the repeat-effort engine a rally asks for. When you are ready to hit, most clubs and community programmes run beginner group sessions, so you learn the strokes in a class rather than alone.

Taking up golf: rotate well, then add power

Golf rewards a different quality. A swing is a chain of movement that runs from the ground up, through the feet, the hips and the upper back, and the club only moves fast if that chain turns freely. For a beginner the useful base is mobility and rotation, especially through the hips and the mid-back, plus a stable core to transfer the turn and some lower-body power for later. Mobility tends to improve within a few weeks of consistent work, while real strength and swing speed build over a longer, patient block.

In practice that means gentle rotational drills, hip and upper-back mobility, and core stability two or three times a week, before you ever worry about hitting far. A personal trainer can check how well you rotate and set the right starting exercises, which is quicker and safer than guessing. Golf is also a walking sport played over several hours, so simple aerobic fitness pays off across a full round.

Start your base at GymNation

You do not need to live next to Qiddiya to get ready for it. A gym in Riyadh gives you everything the base for either sport asks for: space to build agility and rotation, coaching to learn the movements, and the conditioning that makes a long session or a full round feel comfortable. Ready to get started? Try GymNation with a free day pass, fill in the enquiry form, and the team will help you build a plan around the sport you want to play.

Sources:
gulfnews.com
gdnonline.com

The opinions shared in the GymNation blog articles are solely those of the respective authors and may not represent the perspectives of GymNation or any member of the GymNation team.