Later on Tuesday, Belarusian player Ilya Ivashka used his Instagram page to highlight an email sent to all the players left in the UAE. The email said that “The ATP is potentially organising a charter flight on Thursday, March 5 from Muscat … The cost is €5,000 per person”.

This hugely expensive offer prompted an outcry from the players, although the ATP later blamed a miscommunication, saying that the charter was operated by a third party, and they were only passing on the information.

However, one coach told Telegraph Sport that the ATP should take responsibility and cover the cost of extracting those stuck in Fujairah, a city of 120,000 people which stands 75 miles from Dubai across the Hajar Mountains.

“It seems to me that the ATP are happy to treat players like employees when it suits them,” said the coach. “For instance, if you don’t turn up for a tournament you’ve entered, you get fined. But then, when players need help in a situation like this, they go back to being sole traders who are supposed to sort themselves out. I don’t think it’s ethical.”

Later on Tuesday, the Professional Tennis Players’ Association – the body founded by Novak Djokovic as a pressure group to force change within the sport – released a statement criticising the ATP for allowing the Fujairah Challenger to go ahead in the first place. In the same statement, the PTPA also offered to cover €2,500 of the charter fee through Muscat for each player, and challenged the ATP to do the same.

As the PTPA statement put it: “We believe it is inappropriate for players to bear additional financial burdens resulting from circumstances beyond their control.” 

Frustrated players say that the ATP had confirmed that the first event would go ahead as recently as Sunday, even after initial reports of explosions in Dubai the previous day had circulated. The city has come under attack as part of Iran’s retaliation against US strikes.

One Briton – doubles specialist Fin Bass – has narrowly avoided travelling to Fujairah after his plane was delayed at Heathrow, but three others – Zach Stephens, Max Basing and Alastair Gray – all are stranded at the players’ hotel with no immediate way out of the UAE.

“Being stuck in a war zone is pretty unsettling especially when missiles are hitting oil rigs 15 kilometres from where the tournament is being played,” Gray told Telegraph Sport. “I’m pretty surprised the tournaments even started.” Gray also admitted that, while staying in Dubai on Saturday, a bomb had exploded just a couple of blocks from his hotel.

Other players caught up in the confusion include the 2025 Wimbledon men’s doubles champions: Essex’s Henry Patten and Finland’s Harri Heliovaara. These two were not playing in Fujairah but instead won the more prestigious Dubai Duty Free Championships on Saturday.

Patten and Heliovaara are due to play at Indian Wells in California from this weekend. On Tuesday, they drove from Dubai to the border with Oman, hoping to catch a flight out of Muscat, but were delayed for so long by paperwork issues on the border that they lost any chance of catching that flight and had to drive back.

Meanwhile, Patten’s coach, Calvin Betton, is waiting for them in Indian Wells. As Betton told Telegraph Sport, “The crazy thing is that this tournament [Indian Wells] is run by one of the richest people in the world [Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison], and the DDF event is also run by incredibly wealthy people. Dubai’s airspace is now open, and yet they can’t find a jet to get people out. It’s not just Harri and Henry, there are others stuck there as well.”