Design the tennis season

[nowhereman]

I definitely applaud the major tournaments putting roofs on their showpiece courts. I think RG is the only hold-out there. A ton of matches have been negatively impacted by rain and/or other weather. In my opinion, the inclement weather can be left to football. I don't think that's a variable tennis needs.

I'm think RG will have a roof by 2018, so weather won't be a problem there anymore.
Now if only all the majors had night matches too. Night tennis makes the tournament a whole lot more enjoyable if you ask me.

 

[Deleted member 743561]

Hard to imagine USO w/out the nighttime thrillfests. Something about those raucous matches under the lights in NYC will always be synonymous with Fed for me

 

[Algo]

Fast hard and grass all year long.

 

[Deleted member 743561]

Fast hard and grass all year long.

Absolutely. Speed it up across the board. Throw the baseline bashers a bone, and leave a few clay tourneys I guess. But otherwise, reverse the slow-death-of-tennis and "cut the sandpaper."

 

[nowhereman]

Fast hard and grass all year long.

No carpet?

 

[droliver]

No carpet?

There's no one outside this board that really wants carpet to make a comeback. The players definitely don't want it.

 

[Inanimate_object]

Tennis has an absurd schedule. It's so mind boggling it defies common sense. Seriously , a 1 month off season?

One. Month. Off season.

Scrap Madrid, Bercy, Cincy and the Asian Swing. Move the Open to early August and end the season immediately with the year end championships no later than early September. Schedule all events around the idea that the Open and YEC end the season before fall hits. And give players the chance for a break and fans a chance to miss tennis.

 

[Deleted member 688153]

Tennis has an absurd schedule. It's so mind boggling it defies common sense. Seriously , a 1 month off season?

One. Month. Off season.

Scrap Madrid, Bercy, Cincy and the Asian Swing. Move the Open to early August and end the season immediately with the year end championships no later than early September. Schedule all events around the idea that the Open and YEC end the season before fall hits. And give players the chance for a break and fans a chance to miss tennis.

Good post man.

I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with all of what you've said, but this is just what we need for an interesting discussion.
Much better than the usual "Make everything fast", which would end up just as bad as the current ATP mantra "make everything slow".

Most sports do have a shorter season, and perhaps it would be a good idea to shorten the season to make tennis less of an endurance/fitness competition like it currently is.

I don't think Paris or the Asian Swing really serve any purpose other than to fill in the calendar.
No-one's going to miss a couple of HC Masters, they're a dime a dozen anyway.

 

[Deleted member 743561]

Tennis has an absurd schedule. It's so mind boggling it defies common sense. Seriously , a 1 month off season?

One. Month. Off season.

Scrap Madrid, Bercy, Cincy and the Asian Swing. Move the Open to early August and end the season immediately with the year end championships no later than early September. Schedule all events around the idea that the Open and YEC end the season before fall hits. And give players the chance for a break and fans a chance to miss tennis.

A few thoughts on this though. 1) Individual sport. So it's not as if it is a league coordinating a bunch of teams, with all of those inherent complications. The players make their own schedules and (since they do not generally win all of their tournaments) end up with more free time than it would appear; 2) The money is staggering at the very top, but some of the players on the 2nd tier would not appreciate the loss of some events; 3) Even in the "off season", many of the top players choose to continue playing in exhibition tournaments to pad their bank accounts. They opt to keep playing; 4) I don't think hardcore fans of the sport really have any complaints about year-round play!

 

[-Bobo-]

9 Month Season,

Starts off with slowest surface and ramps up through the season.

2 masters, plus 1 GS per surface over a two month period. So start of each month Masters, GS starts 2 weeks in to second month.

Go from Clay, to slow HC, to Fast HC to Grass (would prefer a 4th surface but carpet sucks).

YEC in 9th month, along with last masters, surface for both by vote of top 8 players, weighting vote by ranking, i.e 1st rank worth 8 points, 2nd 7 points and so on.

Bigger differences between the surfaces in terms of speed, bounce etc would be a must too so that more variety of play is present. (S&v back in the day wasn't good despite what the oldies keep saying. Everything from racquets, to conditions favoured it and thus the net player, now with new string and racquet tech i think it would be balanced even if you sped some of the surfaces back up, and besides slower courts surface would still favour baseline, faster would favour all court/net play.) This would provide more variety in who is successful and what styles of play would be present.

The increase from slow to fast would allow players to adapt to different speeds and the footwork requirements of different surfaces so you wouldn't get the 15 injuries you seem to get at Wimbledon these days.

Time off would allow players to develop more.

The other tournaments would be played by lower ranked players creating a more sustainable scene for those ranked outside of the top 100.

Not very practical but probably ideal for the reasons above, however good luck moving surfaces and tournaments time slots etc with people who cling onto something significantly less optimal for the sake of 'history'.