Tournament & Tour Announcements

[dave g]

Here are the elephants that I see: how many players from the premier tour get relegated to the lower tier each year, and how many players for the lower tier get promoted to the premier tour each year, and how are they chosen? Also, if the lower tier does not generate ranking points in the premier tier, how are you going to rank an new entry to the premier tier if you can't use the points from their previous year?

[ti-amie]

The end game is to give KSA a Masters 1000.

[dave g]

The end game is to give KSA a Masters 1000.

This post caused me a bit of confusion at first. That is due to me being a former federal employee, where KSA stands for Knowledge, Skills and Abilities.

[ti-amie]

The end game is to give KSA a Masters 1000.

This post caused me a bit of confusion at first. That is due to me being a former federal employee, where KSA stands for Knowledge, Skills and Abilities.

So sorry! Still, that is funny.

[meganfernandez]

https://theathletic.com/5147362/2023/12 ... ix-tennis/

Professional Tennis Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.

Matthew Futterman
Dec 28, 2023
28
Tennis is doing what it does every 10-15 years or so — having a reckoning with its endless schedule, its nonsensical governing structure, and a competitive format that even devout fans struggle to understand.

Since when? Pretty easy.

The sport is played across the world, with countries on every continent except Antarctica producing top players. No major sport integrates men and women more successfully, or has come as close to pay equality, though there is work to be done on those fronts. Nearly every day of the year, an enticing professional match unfolds somewhere on the planet.

Dubious. Let's see the ratings for matches on any given Monday or Tuesday. If those matches were enticing, people would watch them.

And yet, the nearly unanimous opinion of everyone involved in the game — its leaders, its players, tournament organizers, sponsors, media executives, coaches — is that professional tennis is broken,

I think this is a huge exaggeration, and sensationalizing. Sure, it needs improvements. But if it was broken, the top players wouldn't be making multi-millions each year. Players wouldn't be competing longer than they ever have. The US Open wouldn't have set attendance records last year.

a structural mess that exhausts its players, cannibalizes its business with dueling events and exists in a constant state of civil war among its alphabet soup of governing bodies. There are seven of them, or maybe nine or 10, depending on who is doing the counting.

I'd say there are 3 global governing bodies - the ITF, ATP and WTA. Slams and country competitions are tournaments, not governing bodies. The USTA is a regional governing body, and most countries have one, like all sports.

As the 2024 tennis season gets underway in Australia, what might make this reckoning different from all the previous reckonings is the near unanimity on what tennis needs to fix itself. Ask nearly anyone involved in nearly any facet of the sport how to fix it, which we did, and the same answer almost always comes back: a clearly defined, premium tennis tour built around the game’s most valuable legacy events and its best players that is easy to follow, includes both men and women and doesn’t overtax stars.

The most overused word in the media in the last few years. Reporters love a reckoning.

What would tennis look like under the new framework?

The details are still being worked out, but the broad outline is built around a premier tour for top-level players — say, roughly the top 100.

They would play at least the 14 biggest tournaments on the schedule: the Grand Slams, the 10-12 biggest and most successful tour events, and the two tour finals. They could drop down and play a few smaller tournaments, but anything that happens in those tournaments is separate from the main tour.

The premier events would include Wimbledon, the U.S., Australian and French Opens; mixed events in Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Rome, Toronto/Montreal, and Cincinnati; men’s tournaments in Monte Carlo, Paris and Shanghai; Women’s events in Dubai, Doha and Beijing. Other top candidates for inclusion would include events in Washington D.C., Tokyo, and possibly the men’s event in Beijing, since they are world capitals.

All the other events would be part of a developmental tour, with players outside the top 100 competing to make the premier tour. Higher-ranked players who need matches or want to collect an appearance fee could play in a few of those events each year, but the results would not count toward the premier tour standings and rankings.

Effectively, this doesn't sound much different than what we have now. Just dropping a few 500s and 250s from a player's schedule, and they would still play a few of those where they get big appearance fees, like Dubai. I don't think it would change anything from a fan's perspective. it would just be new branding.

Everyone in tennis believes the season is too long and disparate. It is.

Could top players play 4 Slams and 10-12 major events of 2 weeks each and a tour championships in 8-9 months? 16 events of 2 weeks each is 32 weeks, plus 1 week for a tour championship. They need a few off weeks - let's say 8, so half the events should be followed by a week off. That's 41 weeks, leaving 11 (under 3 months) for an off-season. What about Davis/BJK Cup and Laver Cup? And top players who often take 3-4 weeks off after a Slam, not merely one? The math doesn't add up to a dramatically shorter season.

“It’s like having a calendar with seven different discussions in seven different rooms,” Gaudenzi said in November during a meeting with a small group of journalists in Italy. “I’m trying to convince everybody we’re managing one product. We’re all part of the same book. We might write different chapters, but we’re part of the same book and we can’t sell different chapters in different bookstores.”

Selling just one “book”, to use Gaudenzi’s metaphor, would make the sport simpler to follow and likely drive up the price for media rights and sponsorships. Right now, tournaments and the different governing bodies compete with one another. That drives down prices since buyers can play one off against the other. Bundling a collection of premier tournaments, selling them together and partnering with networks dedicated to exploiting all the content the sport produces instead of just the final rounds would likely drive up investment substantially.

This might make sense but it's very in the weeds, not something fans are aware of. I don't think this even affects fans that much. The only way they would benefit is if tennis has a regular, predictable presence on TV. The analogy of buying one book chapter in seven different stores isn't right. I go to a couple stores to watch tennis, not 7 - ESPN and Tennis Channel (either on cable or streaming). Isn't that how a lot of sports are? Your NFL and NBA team doesn't play on same channel every week. The one advantage other sports have is they have well-defined seasons and playing schedules. You know you can watch college football on Saturdays, NFL on Sundays and Mondays (and Thursdays and Saturdays), NBA about any night of the week Nov-April, and they all lead up to the showcase event. That's easy to follow. But golf doesn't follow that format. Is it broken?

There is a question of whether narrowing the scope of big-time tennis to a premier tour is good for the long-term health of the professional game.

“The big difference between tennis and nearly every other sport is that tennis events are tied to participation,” said the owner of a mid-sized tournament. “F1 is a spectacle. You can’t grow a global participation sport with 14 tournaments around the world.”

Are they, though? Is he saying that that vast majority of people watching tennis tournaments also play, and if the sport doesn't continually mint more players, it won't have spectators? Why? Other sports don't rely on rec players for viability. Plus, a lot of people (especially the tennis-fan demo) start playing as adults because their kid or spouse or friend plays, not because they saw a tournament. And anyway, those smaller tournaments that expose more people to tennis would still exist as a development tour, which is what we have now.

Morris said the small- and mid-sized tournaments might be more appealing than they are now if the sport organized them into regional circuits, with players competing to make the premier tour for the following season and coveted spots throughout the season in the Grand Slams and other top events.

In other words, whoever wins in Estoril, Portugal, Charleston, S.C. or Auckland could have new import, in addition to the limited star attractions they now enjoy. Play well for six weeks on lower-tier tours and receive a wild card entry into, say, the French Open.

This makes sense and has some appeal, but only to hard-core fans. Promotion and relegation won't affect the top players and stars. It's not like team sports, where there are only a handful to follow and you notice who gets promoted and relegated.

[Fastbackss]

Here are the elephants that I see: how many players from the premier tour get relegated to the lower tier each year, and how many players for the lower tier get promoted to the premier tour each year, and how are they chosen? Also, if the lower tier does not generate ranking points in the premier tier, how are you going to rank an new entry to the premier tier if you can't use the points from their previous year?

I tend to agree with Dave here. This would be a detail overlooked until you establish what the true cut line is.

I used to also follow golf and bowling pretty ardently, each which has a variation of this system.

Both had some form of:
The top x% stay on the tour.

In golf there was a secondary which was if you finished in the top x-y% you would be guaranteed entry into a lower number of tournaments, but not full.

Both had some form of "qualifying school" where a handful of spots were given out.

Golf also had agreements with lower tours that a few spots would be given to top rankers of lower tours.

For a while I thought tennis needed a similar system. I no longer agree, it is what sets it apart that anyone can get entry by qualifying into a tournament. (Yes I realize golf does this for some events too but some of those are open to anyone - tennis is still "next" ranking based which is more fair)


But for the sake of this exercise here is what I would do

The top 108 create the mega tour.
Guaranteed entry into slams.
Creates ostensibly up to 12 alternates for the 1000 draws. This number would be lower due to injury (Although personally I think it would be sporting to limit the draws of the 1000 to 64 and then hold a qualifying draw even within the mega tour folk)

I feel like 12 is the right number to be relegated but wouldn't be hurt if the number was larger - because there wouldn't be enough turnover otherwise.

[Suliso]

If golf was played exclusively in match play format like tennis they'd have very similar issues and rankings would be far more important than they are now. Perhaps it's better to compare with snooker? It's just that number of players in that sport so much lower.

[ponchi101]

All the points that Megan says. An article written to address... the lull of the off season.

[mmmm8]

I will say this, I don't love a lot of new decisions from the ATP and the direction they seem to be going - it's still reactive against what's happening in other sports, rather than proactive BUT at least they seem to have a direction. The WTA is really just flailing.

[ashkor87]

Doha (Qatar Total) entry list not up yet.. strange.. tomorrow is the draw!

[skatingfan]

Doha (Qatar Total) entry list not up yet.. strange.. tomorrow is the draw!

The draw is up.

https://www.wtatennis.com/tournament/10 ... 2024/draws

[ashkor87]

Doha (Qatar Total) entry list not up yet.. strange.. tomorrow is the draw!

The draw is up.

https://www.wtatennis.com/tournament/10 ... 2024/draws

I see it now ..thanks!

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

Translation.
The Emir of Qatar has decided to drop a few extra million into the coffers of this tournament.
And just like that...

[ashkor87]

https://www.tennis.com/news/articles/sa ... rship-deal

so it has come to this.. oh well.