coolboarder
Rookie
Now the grass court is in the full swing. I find the grass court tennis matches attractive to watch, regardless of who they play. I find myself watching lesser players on the tour play on the grass and award the attacking tennis and varieties on strategies that I would not be watching them playing elsewhere in the clay and hard court during the year except for Masters and Grand Slams. I would love to see grass court tennis thriving, award the lesser players hard-earned points in the ranking.
While this is good thing if they could strengthen the grass court season but it is impossible to ask the Grand Slam organizations to change the date completely as French Open will not change their date and Wimbledon has already done their part by extending a week later starting in 2015. The weather in Paris is not that warm at the start of the tournament and it gets better weather as the tournament went on and if they decide to change their date, the weather won't get warmer at all by the time the final arrived is the reason why French Open won't change their date.
So I have already stated my reasons why it is tougher to convince the tournament organizers to change their surface preference and I am going to present my solution to ATP and tennis players' desire to have more grass court tournaments throughout the year as Andy Roddick and a few others did in the past.
Before I discuss on how to present my ideas, we all agree that there are three main surface seasons: April, May is reserved for clay court season, June is reserved for grass court season, and August/September is reserved for hard court season, leading up to the Grand Slam and there is nothing we can do to change this part of the schedule.
Now I want to discuss three areas for possible solutions for 2016 or 2017 season, first, I have noticed here are dead tennis months, February and July. They have this thing in common, anti-climax tournaments after the Grand Slam finals, Australian Open and Wimbledon. This is the first part, I find, easier to organize any grass court tournament. I do not get it why they didn't organize any grass court tournaments in February and July, save for Newport, there are clay and hard court tournament held at the same week and not having any grass tennis tournament in these months does not make any sense when this is considered dead tennis months.
Even worse, there are some 500 events for clay and hard court tournaments being held in month of February, and July, why they could not hold a 500 grass court tournament during these months as well.
Secondly, I would make some changes to Masters series and since ATP has the power to upgrade or degrade the tournament organization to 250, 500, or 1000 status. The ATP could convince them to change the surface preferences or offer them the opportunity to make the event more prestigious by awarding them the 500 or 1000 status once some of the events' contract agreements expire.
We can all agree that March is the biggest Masters month reserved for hard court in the calendar and I feel that this hard court Masters has no warm-up to any major tournament so this part of the calendar can be tinkered with surfaces sudden change. I also would make a complete change to make this Masters Series a bigger 6-week stretch. If one of two Indian Wells or Miami decides to give a grass court some love by changing the surface. They can hold a Grass court masters in Indian Wells then a hard court masters in Miami or Hard court masters in Indian Wells or grass court Masters in Miami, whatever comes first. I personally feel that Miami is great location for a grass court than Indian Wells.
I think that the ATP can hold 3 masters tournaments in a row with three surface changes, hard, grass and clay and reschedule the Monte Carlo couple of weeks earlier with a break in the date for a Davis Cup play. You would get some balanced change of surface in three consecutive Masters tournaments with 96 draws for all three surfaces. This schedule would give ATP challengers tour a break for almost two months to give a lower ranked players a chance to establish their ranking for the rest of the year and be able to enter in the ATP tournaments a bit easier than for a lower grass courter having a hard time entering a 250 or 500 grass court events.
Finally, since I mention that during a dead tennis months, award a 500 events in February and July each (two 500 grass court events), there is no need for a 500 Queens/Halle but rather, award them with a Grass Masters leading up to Wimbledon, and we'd have two Grass Masters, three Clay Masters and five Hard Court Masters tournament. That's it.
For my own personal preference, I also would make this one final change, bring back carpet season, focus the fall month on carpet so remove a Hard Court Masters, make it 4 Hard Court Masters tournaments.
I have said my piece, now, it's your turn to voice your thought on how to strength the grass court schedule and keep in mind, you cannot change a certain surface seasons but you can convince the ATP to put the variety back in the calendar for all three important tennis surfaces. You get the opportunity to make your own calendar in this thread. I will post another solution with a new idea in this thread some other time as this is ATP-centered, not ITF as it's harder to convince them to change their traditions. I look forward to your ideas.
While this is good thing if they could strengthen the grass court season but it is impossible to ask the Grand Slam organizations to change the date completely as French Open will not change their date and Wimbledon has already done their part by extending a week later starting in 2015. The weather in Paris is not that warm at the start of the tournament and it gets better weather as the tournament went on and if they decide to change their date, the weather won't get warmer at all by the time the final arrived is the reason why French Open won't change their date.
So I have already stated my reasons why it is tougher to convince the tournament organizers to change their surface preference and I am going to present my solution to ATP and tennis players' desire to have more grass court tournaments throughout the year as Andy Roddick and a few others did in the past.
Before I discuss on how to present my ideas, we all agree that there are three main surface seasons: April, May is reserved for clay court season, June is reserved for grass court season, and August/September is reserved for hard court season, leading up to the Grand Slam and there is nothing we can do to change this part of the schedule.
Now I want to discuss three areas for possible solutions for 2016 or 2017 season, first, I have noticed here are dead tennis months, February and July. They have this thing in common, anti-climax tournaments after the Grand Slam finals, Australian Open and Wimbledon. This is the first part, I find, easier to organize any grass court tournament. I do not get it why they didn't organize any grass court tournaments in February and July, save for Newport, there are clay and hard court tournament held at the same week and not having any grass tennis tournament in these months does not make any sense when this is considered dead tennis months.
Even worse, there are some 500 events for clay and hard court tournaments being held in month of February, and July, why they could not hold a 500 grass court tournament during these months as well.
Secondly, I would make some changes to Masters series and since ATP has the power to upgrade or degrade the tournament organization to 250, 500, or 1000 status. The ATP could convince them to change the surface preferences or offer them the opportunity to make the event more prestigious by awarding them the 500 or 1000 status once some of the events' contract agreements expire.
We can all agree that March is the biggest Masters month reserved for hard court in the calendar and I feel that this hard court Masters has no warm-up to any major tournament so this part of the calendar can be tinkered with surfaces sudden change. I also would make a complete change to make this Masters Series a bigger 6-week stretch. If one of two Indian Wells or Miami decides to give a grass court some love by changing the surface. They can hold a Grass court masters in Indian Wells then a hard court masters in Miami or Hard court masters in Indian Wells or grass court Masters in Miami, whatever comes first. I personally feel that Miami is great location for a grass court than Indian Wells.
I think that the ATP can hold 3 masters tournaments in a row with three surface changes, hard, grass and clay and reschedule the Monte Carlo couple of weeks earlier with a break in the date for a Davis Cup play. You would get some balanced change of surface in three consecutive Masters tournaments with 96 draws for all three surfaces. This schedule would give ATP challengers tour a break for almost two months to give a lower ranked players a chance to establish their ranking for the rest of the year and be able to enter in the ATP tournaments a bit easier than for a lower grass courter having a hard time entering a 250 or 500 grass court events.
Finally, since I mention that during a dead tennis months, award a 500 events in February and July each (two 500 grass court events), there is no need for a 500 Queens/Halle but rather, award them with a Grass Masters leading up to Wimbledon, and we'd have two Grass Masters, three Clay Masters and five Hard Court Masters tournament. That's it.
For my own personal preference, I also would make this one final change, bring back carpet season, focus the fall month on carpet so remove a Hard Court Masters, make it 4 Hard Court Masters tournaments.
I have said my piece, now, it's your turn to voice your thought on how to strength the grass court schedule and keep in mind, you cannot change a certain surface seasons but you can convince the ATP to put the variety back in the calendar for all three important tennis surfaces. You get the opportunity to make your own calendar in this thread. I will post another solution with a new idea in this thread some other time as this is ATP-centered, not ITF as it's harder to convince them to change their traditions. I look forward to your ideas.
