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The best of the rest:
WTA planning B-level championships and more Continued August 3 is the week that is currently held by San Diego, a Tier I tournament that will be gone after 2007. So will Cincinnati step up and take this spot, which will cost Octagon or whomever else who wants to buy the designation $8 million? Will Los Angeles (Carson) follow and make itself an "A" the next week? We can be reasonably sure that Canada will lock into the final August week, but what we can also be sure of is that the USTA and its US Open Series isn't going to bite on this scenario given that the field in New Haven is sure to be weak. Why? Because even though any player can enter New Haven, most of the stars will have had to play two out of three previous weeks and will want a week of rest prior to the Open. Moreover, from a US perspective, almost all of the US players will choose to play the three summer "A"s as part of their tournament commitment (foregoing one of the clays and a tournament in the fall), and there is no way they will choose to play six weeks straight through the Open. What appears to be happening here is that the WTA is trying to force the USTA's hand to upgrade one or two of its US Open Series events and, in exchange, asking it to sacrifice another one or two. Then the tour moves to the fall, with four more "A"s planned including the tour championships. The week of September 28 will likely go to China, in either Beijing or Shanghai. Then there's a nine-day event planned the week of October 5, which could be Moscow, but could also be another stay in China. Then there's the week of Oct. 17, which should be Zurich, even though tournament promoters there doesn't seem to be convinced that they can sell enough tickets to justify staying at an A-level. The Sony Ericsson WTA Championships will take place on the week of November. 2. BREAKING NEWS There's a lot more to chew on and I will at a later date, but a few more highlights: • In between Wimbledon and August 3, the first
day of an A-level tournament, there are spots for eight B-level tournaments
(two a week for a month). Assuming that Cincy becomes an "A" (unless
Washington gets involved), as of today there are only four tournaments
that could fill those slots (Stanford, Palermo, Kitzbuhel and Stockholm).
It seems like wishful thinking that more sites would apply to run tournaments
without marquee names. With all that said, it's not easy to come up with a workable plan with so many factions involved. With some decent tweaking here and there, the roadmap could work, as long as the tour doesn't plant its feet in cement. Abandoning markets where women's rights (and athletics) are supported for ones where women are repressed and treated as sex objects is not a sound one, regardless of how green the money is. To some degree, the market will determine whether this request for more cash is legitimate, but has been written here many times, how fair is it to ask companies that compete in market economies to compete with so-called companies in semi or non-capitalistic ones. It isn't and on the tournament application form, there should be a check off to determine whether an applicant is representing a government entity, and maybe whether that government has any history of supporting women's rights. MY NEW BOOK © TennisReporters.net 2006
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