TR.net SUBSCRIBER LOGIN

E-mail address

Password

Subscribe to TR.net

Nadal out of Davis Cup, weakening a wounded series

WTA Roadmap changes clarified; ATP in Shanghai

"National" B-plus level 7-day tournaments: These tournaments get one of the Top 6 players and two of the Top 13, or two of the Top 6. These are essentially Tier II tournaments, even though they are being described as "premier." If a tournament falls the week before a Slam, there are no restrictions on how many top players can enter. That applies to Sydney, either Berlin or Stuttgart, Eastbourne and New Haven.

The calendar gets a bit sketchy here, especially when it comes to spring clay court events in Europe. Here's where things appear to stand now.

Doha: Which will move to the 2nd week of January (right after their men's tournament)
Sydney: The week before the Aussie Open
Paris Indoors: The week of Feb 9.
Charleston: The week of April 13 and remember that this is a downgrade, because it's currently an A-level tournament.
Stuttgart and Berlin: One will be played the week of April 27 (bring your mittens), and the other will be played the week prior to Roland Garros.
Stanford: week of Aug. 27
LA (Carson): The week of Aug. 3
Tokyo: The week of Sept. 28, which is moving from February.

A few more things to note: With Madrid getting an A-level tournament in 2009, you can pretty much kiss that city's hosting of the WTA Championships goodbye after next year. Shanghai, which lost out to Beijing in the bidding war, remains a candidate to host the Championships that year and beyond, especially because the ATP Board approved Shanghai as the host of the ATP's Asian Masters Series tournament, starting in 2009.

That city has hosted the men's season-ending Tennis Masters Cup on three occasions and will continue to stage the tournament in China for the next two years. After that, the ATP Championships appears to be headed for London.

The WTA has said it will work with the ATP on trying to combine the Beijing and Shanghai tournaments at some level (but don't expect combined A-level fields for quite a while) or try to switch out the quality of the playing fields on a year-to-year basis.

Here's one big question: Why no announcement from the ATP side on a combined event in Madrid, when Ion Tiriac and his group have stated their intention to move the Madrid Masters Series to the spot.

More on Thursday on what the USTA's reaction was.

On court, go to www.foxsports.com for my analysis on Serena Williams' second straight thrashing of Maria Sharapova. … Roddick won his Davis Cup scrimmage over David Ferrer. … Andy Murray barely survived P-H Mathieu, but did and now the world will get a taste of Andy v. Andy again.

PREVIOUS PAGE | 1 | 2

TennisReporters.net encourages e-mail comments on our stories. Any e-mail sent to feedback@tennisreporters.net
will be considered for posting in our Feedback section. Please include your full name and hometown/state/country.
TennisReporters.net reserves the right to edit all feedback for content and length.

Click here for the TennisReporters.net privacy policy.