WTA Tour Larry Scott

In trying to dissect more of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour's plans, I'm going to dive deep into tennis industry wonk mode (my kids call it being a "Melvin") and look at the Roadmap 2010 Circuit Restructure Overview, a fascinating, just released 35-page document which lays out the 2009 tournament calendar by "A"s, "B"s (and a smidgen of "B-plus"), without naming tournament locations.

This is a working document, so nothing is ground in stone. But it was sent out to the tour's partners on November 21, so it's fair to say that it contains the WTA's ambitions for the calendar to come

In the proposed 2009 calendar, there would be 14 A-level tournaments outside of the Grand Slams (including the Sony Ericsson Championships), with four combined men and women's tournaments being mandatory for the top stars, and seven others being semi-mandatory, meaning that players ranked 1-20 would have to commit to seven of the nine non-Championships tournaments.

That's news even to the wonkish me, because in my discussions with the tour over the last month, I thought that all the "A"s would be mandatory. But they are not in this working document. Those non-mandatory "A"s will look essentially the same as most Tier 1s did this year - getting six out of the Top-10 players and another six ranked 11 through 20: all that for giving out another $400,000 in prize money.

WTA CEO Larry Scott told TennisReporters.net last week that the top players will be able to play however many B-level tournaments they wish to as long as they satisfied their commitments to the "A"s … but that's not what the document says. The roadmap overview says that the top players will only be able to play one B-level tournament in each half of the year (Wimbledon being the designated halfway point) and only enter via wild card. This contradicts what Scott said. This isn't to say that Scott has had a change of heart, but the document clearly reflects what many tournaments directors feared prior to the tour's board meeting in Madrid: that they will left without stars to promote their events.

That's a death sentence for the proposed 32 B-level tournaments on the roadmap, which is why the USTA and others so strenuously objective to the plan.

Here's a sketch of where the A-level tournaments would fall in the proposed 2009 calendar:

On January 5, the tour would like to have one A-level seven-day event, presumably in wealthy Doha, which would move back from February. Sydney will be the next week and given that it's a week before a Slam, it doesn't have to sweat the playing field quite as much, as any player can enter a tournament the week before a Slam. But here's why Sydney should be very worried if it doesn't bid up to become an "A" - six of the top 10 players would have to enter Doha, meaning that most of them won't enter Sydney, because that would mean one month of straight playing with the Australian Open being held the second two weeks of January.

There are also slots for two seven-day "A" level events in February, one presumably being Dubai, with Tokyo, Antwerp and Paris being the contenders for the other spot.

Then Indian Wells and Miami will go back to back as mandatory 12-day A-level tournaments in March.

CAN TOURNAMENTS LIKE CHARLESTON PONY UP THE DOUGH?
Then there are two slots for seven-day A-level tournaments slots on April 20 and 27. Who gets in there? There are no clear frontrunners, but Charleston, now a Tier I, could come up the extra dough and start on April 20 (the second round Fed Cup has been moved to the week of April 13; the first week will now be Feb. 2). But there is no 2007 tournament out there that looks a sure bet for April 27 unless Berlin (which is owned by Qatar) moves back. Given how cold it is in Germany during April, that seems improbable. So does Warsaw come with an extra $4 million to buy an "A" designation? Is some other site lurking?

What it looks like is that the tour might be counting on Ian Tiriac and his TMS Madrid group to muscle their way their into the spring and seize the May 11 spot, which is slated to be a nine-day combined event, and force Rome to move back into April. Let the gladiators enter the coliseum.

Thankfully, Fed Cup will now longer be played on its death date during the summer (the week after Wimbledon), but the tour will hold no more A-level tournaments until August, when it is planning on holding three consecutive, seven-day, A-level tournaments beginning on Aug. 3

© TennisReporters.net 2006

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