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From October 10 to 13, Almaty will host events for the annual General Assembly of World Tennis, formerly the International Tennis Federation (ITF). The meeting of national tennis federation leaders will be held in Central Asia for the first time. More than 262 delegates from 137 countries are expected to attend. Founded in 1913, World Tennis is tennis’s global governing body. It sets the rules of the game and oversees the Davis Cup, Billie Jean King Cup, and junior competitions. In June 2026, the federation changed its name from ITF to World Tennis. Its leadership also announced plans to increase the number of people playing tennis worldwide from 106 million to 140 million by 2035. The federation's Board of Directors will meet in Almaty on October 10–11, followed by the General Assembly and voting on October 13. The announced topics include support for national federations, the development of children's tennis, training for coaches and officials, and the organization of international competitions. The Kazakhstan Tennis Federation is headed by Bulat Utemuratov, who also serves as vice president of World Tennis. In recent years, Kazakhstan has regularly hosted international tournaments, including the ATP 250 Almaty Open. The next tournament will take place later that month, from October 17 to 25. The meeting will take place shortly after Elena Rybakina's victory at the U.S. Open, her third Grand Slam title. Rybakina has now risen to the top of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) rankings for the first time.
Most of the international attention on women tennis players from Kazakhstan goes to Elena Rybakina, the second-ranked, Moscow-born player who has won two Grand Slam singles titles. But Sonja Zhiyenbayeva, a Kazakh talent still far from the elite group at the top of the game, has delivered such strong results this month that the WTA included her in a list of “notable ranking movements.” Zhiyenbayeva, a former junior number 15, moved up 288 spots to 450 in the rankings after winning her first W75 tournament as a qualifier in Ourense, Spain, beating Isabella Shinikova of Bulgaria for the title on August 9. The 20-year-old Kazakhstani followed up that victory by winning the W35 title in Vigo, Spain, on August 16, defeating China’s Yufei Ren, who was ranked 332. The Vigo title should push Zhiyenbayeva’s world ranking closer to 400. “Thus, in the space of two weeks in Spain, Zhiyenbayeva captured back-to-back titles — the W75 in Ourense and the W35 in Vigo, continuing her impressive run of form on the professional tour,” the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation said. The numbers in W75 and W35 refer to the ranking points that the champion acquires. Zhiyenbayeva's accumulation of 110 points in the hard court tournaments this month has enabled her to leapfrog over hundreds of other players in the world rankings. She is an economics student at Pepperdine University in California. On her LinkedIn profile, Zhiyenbayeva says her experience as a professional tennis player has helped her develop “discipline, adaptability, and the ability to perform under pressure.” Zhiyenbayeva was born in Almaty and moved to Germany at a young age with her Kazakh mother and German father. She represented Germany as a tennis player but changed her “sport nationality” to join Kazakhstan´s national team in 2024, state-run media in Kazakhstan reported.
