WTA tourneys rebranded

sureshs

Bionic Poster
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081208.WBTennis20081208114445/WBStory/WBTennis

WTA on the rebranding road, too
Tom Tebbutt, December 8, 2008 at 11:44 AM EST

After looking last week at the semantic shenanigans on the men's tour – the ATP about to become the ATP World Tour and its events now labelled Masters 1000s, Masters 500s and Masters 250s – it's time to check out what's happening with the WTA Tour in 2009.

While nothing rivals the ATP changing its name for the third time in nine years (more about that later), the WTA Tour is also renaming (a.k.a. rebranding) its various levels of tournaments.

As with the men, this does not seem necessary, especially because the old system – Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV events – had the quaint touch of employing Roman numerals as well as being very clear about the hierarchy of tournaments, all of which are in the niches below the four Grand Slams.

Now the top-level tournaments will be known as the Premier Mandatory, Premier Five, Premier and Premier Open. Additionally, there are lower-level ‘International' events, which will be allowed no more than one player in the top-20.

The self-explanatory Mandatory tournaments are Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid (a new mixed event on clay before the French Open) and Beijing in the fall, while the Premier Five are Dubai, Rome, Montreal/Toronto, Cincinnati and Tokyo.

In virtually the same manner as the men, there are now 12 tournaments in the year that the women have to play – the four Slams, the four Mandatory events and four of the five Premier Five.

There has been much talk over the past few years about the WTA Tour's Roadmap grand redesign to transform the women's game. After extensive research and much discussion, mainly about how to solve the growing problem of superstars withdrawing from tournaments (usually because of injury), the final result does not appear greatly different from the current situation.

In an effort to lighten the burden on the women, the tour will now use one fewer tournament (17 to 16) when calculating player rankings and add one more week (seven to eight) to the off-season.

But the bottom line is that these changes don't appear likely to significantly increase the odds of Maria Sharapova (shoulder), Serena Williams (knee), Venus Williams (various ailments) and other headliners like Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic remaining healthy and playing their full commitment of 16 tournaments.

There are other aspects of the Roadmap, including sanctions for missing Mandatory events – this affects the highly-publicized Williams sisters' boycott of Indian Wells since their troubles with the crowd there in 2001. If, as planned, they skip Indian Wells next year, they would not be penalized until 2010, which seems a long way away. In that case, they would have to miss the following event (Miami) in 2010, but could avoid any sanction by performing promotional activities for Indian Wells somewhere within the overall geographical area of the tournament. It's all a little fuzzy and who knows what could have changed by then.

Big prize money increases are also part of the Roadmap, with the Mandatory events up to $4.5-million (all currency U.S.), an amount equivalent to the men's top-tier tournaments. That could present problems for Indian Wells because it's a big jump (from $2.1-million) for an event that has no title sponsor for 2009 after losing Pacific Life.

The Rogers Cup, as a Premier Five event, will go from $1.34-million to $2-million.

Good news is that the WTA Tour plans to begin offering a live-streaming package of its elite events similar to what the ATP has done the past few years with its Masters Series.

Another item in the WTA Tour's 2009 plans is the continuation of on-court coaching.

Despite most of the top players not liking the idea, the on-court coaching experiment was not terminated because tour officials believe it adds value to its television coverage, with players and their coaches miked when they talk during the change of ends at the conclusion of a set.

This practice has been widely criticized because it goes against the idea of a player being self-sufficient on court, as well as because it can be clumsy with the coach (or coaches) required to be named before the tournament starts, and just in general because of the logistics of coaches walking out onto the court.

A few years ago in Montreal, Martina Hingis called on her coach/mother Melanie Molitor to come out and counsel her at the end of a set. At the time, you had to wonder what effect seeing the illustrious Molitor walk out had on Hingis's impressionable opponent.

There is the additional problem of so many of the players not speaking English (or whatever the local broadcast language) with their coaches and the question of whether players and coaches can talk freely if their conversation is being recorded.

Having been around tennis for many years, it strikes me that there is a better option if the WTA Tour is so insistent about getting this additional access to the players. Instead of the whole rigaramole of coaches going out onto the court, why not simply slip a headset on the player winning the set and have her talk directly to the television commentators doing the match. This may seem intrusive to some - but who would have believed 10 years ago that players would now be doing interviews on their way out to play the final of Wimbledon, as well as before many other important matches during the year?

That is now commonplace and players have become increasingly aware of the need to give more of themselves for the greater good of the sport. There is a two-minute break at the end of a set – why not just have the winner (the loser is usually of no mind to talk) just answer a couple of basic questions about how they feel, the match, playing conditions, etc. etc. It seems to me that an end-of-set interview might even be easier for a player than having to do one right before going on court when she is probably feeling her most nervous and incommunicative, trying to get into the right head space for the match.

The quick on-court interview would do away with the charade of a coach traipsing out onto the court, avoid the invasion of the privileged conversations between coach and player, maintain the tradition of players having to coach themselves on the court and, most of the time, assure that the language used for the conversation (generally English) would be understood by television viewers.

While this may be heresy for tennis purists, the sport evolves and players would learn to adapt.

Note: After last week's “Nomenclature Nonsense” post about the ATP changing its name in 2009 to ATP World Tour, I received an email from a tennis journalist in Portugal. His complaint was about the paucity of vowels in the word “world,” which makes it difficult to pronounce for speakers of Latin languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French.

Who would have thunk it? But it got me thinking, is it wise to have an English world in the name (and logo?) of the ATP when there are only three players from English-speaking nations in the top 20 (Andy Murray, Andy Roddick and James Blake), and fully seven, starting with numero uno Rafael Nadal, from Spanish-speaking countries?

ATP Mundo Tour anyone?
 

jones101

Hall of Fame
Great read, thanks man.

In theory, the 2009 roadmap sounds like it will, overall, be a great move as it SHOULD ensure that most of the top players will play regularly, which is what the WTA needs at present.

I think it is a shame that the 'Internationls' will only allow a certain number of top 20 players to participate as it may be resticting on the players schedule and also for fans of 'smaller' tounements who pay to (hopefully) see some great tennis players play live, rather than top 30/40 ranked.

Im glad they have decided to determine ranking based on a best of 16/17, as it will reflect the quality of wins more, rather than quantity.
 

SempreSami

Hall of Fame
Note: After last week's “Nomenclature Nonsense” post about the ATP changing its name in 2009 to ATP World Tour, I received an email from a tennis journalist in Portugal. His complaint was about the paucity of vowels in the word “world,” which makes it difficult to pronounce for speakers of Latin languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French.

Who would have thunk it? But it got me thinking, is it wise to have an English world in the name (and logo?) of the ATP when there are only three players from English-speaking nations in the top 20 (Andy Murray, Andy Roddick and James Blake), and fully seven, starting with numero uno Rafael Nadal, from Spanish-speaking countries?

ATP Mundo Tour anyone?

English is probably the most widely spoken language in the world, why should the tour name pander to one group in particular?
 

Underhand

Legend
The self-explanatory Mandatory tournaments are Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid (a new mixed event on clay before the French Open) and Beijing in the fall, while the Premier Five are Dubai, Rome, Montreal/Toronto, Cincinnati and Tokyo.

In virtually the same manner as the men, there are now 12 tournaments in the year that the women have to play – the four Slams, the four Mandatory events and four of the five Premier Five.

Hmm, AFAIK the Top 10 have to play 2 Premier $700,000 tournaments also (2 from Paris, Charleston, Stuttgart, Stanford, Los Angeles).
 

bluetrain4

G.O.A.T.
The tours have tried, and tried again to make top events mandatory. Obviously, we all want to see the top players go head to head as much as possible.

But, it never works. If a top player really doesn't want to play, he or she won't play. Players who don't make as much money may indeed worry about a fine, but a top player will not worry. Also, players can get out of mandatory events for medical reasons. Given that the wear and tear of tennis cause a large number of players to have nagging injuries, whether actually serious or not ("my shoulder is sore," "my knee is bothering me"), it's not even that difficult to get out of a tournament.
 

JankovicFan

Semi-Pro
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081208.WBTennis20081208114445/WBStory/WBTennis

WTA on the rebranding road, too
Tom Tebbutt, December 8, 2008 at 11:44 AM EST

After looking last week at the semantic shenanigans on the men's tour – the ATP about to become the ATP World Tour and its events now labelled Masters 1000s, Masters 500s and Masters 250s – it's time to check out what's happening with the WTA Tour in 2009.

The "Masters" name is barely used on the ATP schedule. It says "ATP World Tour 250", "ATP World Tour 500", "ATP World Tour Masters 1000". Only the 1000 level uses the word "Masters". The former "Masters Cup" is now "Year-End Championship", aka "Barclays ATP World Tour Finals" (sponsor name du jour).

These are nits, but the report might as well be accurate. He was after all discussing name changes and muffed it.

See 2009 ATP Calendar
 
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