Dubai: South African John Laffnie De Jager will lead the UAE Royals in the inaugural International Premier Tennis League (IPTL), which will run between November 28 and December 13, it was announced on Tuesday.

The Dubai-based franchise — which boasts Novak Djokovic as its figurehead player alongside the likes of Marin Cilic, Eugenie Bouchard, Caroline Wozniacki and Goran Ivanisevic — will host the final leg of the four-event season at the Shaikh Hamdan Sports Complex on Emirates Road on December 11 to 13.

And the Royals will benefit from the knowhow of doubles specialist and former ATP Tour player De Jager, who reached the semi-finals of three different Grand Slam tournaments alongside three different compatriots. He reached the Australian Open last-four with Marcos Ondruska in 1993, the US Open semi-finals with Robbie Koenig in 1998 and again matched the feat at Wimbledon in 2000 alongside David Adams.

He is the current non-playing captain of the South Africa Davis Cup team.

The coaches of the three other franchises were also announced on Tuesday. Josh Eagle has joined the Singapore Slammers, Fabrice Santoro has gone to the New Delhi-based Micromax India Aces and Filipino-American Treat Huey will coach the Manila Mavericks.

The IPTL, the brainchild of Indian star Mahesh Bhupathi, features the majority of the world’s top men’s and women’s players, as well as a handful of the game’s legends.

It has dropped the traditional scoring format in favour of single-set no-add scoring, which will speed up the games and enable fans to watch up to 24 different players in an evening. While each match will consist of five sets comprising men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, mixed doubles and former champions singles, each game won will count as a point towards the team total. The team that wins the most games overall across the five sets wins the match.

Other features such as time-outs, power points, shoot-outs, a running shot clock and venues equipped with Hawk-Eye will add to the experience.

The winning team will earn $1 million in prize money.