Dick offered up an interesting “thought” today that’s gotten the tennis twitterverse buzzing, (alongside of his cock fight with a dude carrying a figure skating display pic) and I figured I should explain my thoughts here instead of trying to jam pack them into tweets. He had this little nugget:
“random thought… the tournament at queens club now has 8 of the top 11 entered and its still a 250… no 500 or masters on grass…… um.. 3 masters 1000 on clay and at least 3 or 4 500 tournies on clay. please note that i have not entered an opinion here….. just repeating facts”
Here’s how the facts actually stack up: There are 9 Masters events, 6 for hard courts, 3 for clay. That equals 3 per each respective grand slam (since there are two hard courts slams). There are 11 500 events, 3 are clay, the rest are hard courts (though it’s a bit skewed because of indoor tournaments). There are 6 grass tournaments including Wimbledon. Four of them are before the slam, one is after (in Newport). All but Wimbley are a 250 event.
So why is there no Masters or 500 event on grass? As the man said, Queen’s has a whole ton of top players and it’s only a 250. It’s also the perfect time (2 weeks before Wimbledon) in people’s schedules. So?
1) Grass is hard to maintain: Duh. You have to replace the courts every season, it’s high maintenance, and if it rains, you’re all but screwed. No, we’re not having indoor grass tournaments!
2) Everyone’s gonna play Queen’s anyway: In the eyes of the tournament organizers, why would they want to up the tournament to a 500 event? They have to pay more for prizes, and everyone and their dog is already playing the thing. So the tournament isn’t going to be pushing for an upgrade themselves (though the tour could obviously make the change, if they were smart enough to).
3) Facilities: Queen’s isn’t a large enough tournament in terms of centre court to be a Masters event, but it might be able to pull off a 500. The other ones definitely aren’t.
4) Takes away from other tournaments: Cheers to Aniek for this idea. Considering the “grass season” is a tight squeeze after RG, lower players (outside of the top 20, for example) might choose to play Queen’s in hope of more points and thus really take away from the other tournaments attendance and appeal. An interesting idea.
5) Add one, drop one Adding another Masters tournament would mean that another one would have to get dropped, likely a clay one.
In my eye, Queen’s SHOULD be a 500. At least. Why?
1) Equal pay for equal work It’s silly to have 2000 points up for grab at Wimbledon and 750 in all other tournaments combined because 4 of the tournaments happen in 2 weeks. Literally, the winner of Wimbledon gets more points on grass than is mathematically possible for any other player to amass. Dunno if it’s just me, but that seems a tad ridiculous.
2) Queen’s can’t pay? It’s the effin’ Queen! Gonna try and tell me she doesn’t have money? Sheesh. Not to mention she could upgrade centre court easily.
3) No neutrality There was talk that hard courts are the “neutral” surface and it makes sense to have the most tournaments on it. Bullshit. I’ve always had the idea that clay is the neutral surface, because it “neutralizes” big servers and makes you win the point on the battlefield. All in all, it’s a dumb idea, however, because different surfaces are going to benefit different styles. Period. In other words “grass is a specialty surface so just leave it at Wimbledon. That’s dumb.
4) Make it 500 Queen’s doesn’t have to become a Masters tournament (it’s not going to be with that centre court) but a 500 tournament (and possibly an additional week in between RG and Wimbley) might get people taking the surface more seriously outside of Wimbledon. Because really, it’s Wimbledon + warm up tournaments. No one’s exactly playing those cause they desperately want the championship (ok, Muzz might be…)
Just some ideas. Feel free to agree, disagree, or sling shit at me in the comments.
I can think of only way for there to be a grass Master’s 1000 (and likewise for the ladies) is if we lengthen the grass court season. And to make it less onerous, make it optional.
Move the French back a 2-3 weeks along with all the preceding prep tourneys. But what would go? Monte Carlo? IW/Miami? It wouldn’t be a bad thing to eat into the empty space of the season around Feb and early March.
Sadly, it’s too logical to happen
Completely agree. For Queens to be a 250 event just doesn’t seem right considering the strength of the field.
A grass court Masters would be nice, but there are plenty of reasons why it would be impractical. Making Queens a 500 event seems logical more than anything, and as you said I don’t believe for a second that they’d have any problems paying for it.
http://twitter.com/bgtennisnation/status/12708623441
So you’ve got some support. Also, while you’re at it, McEnroe and Murray discussing playing a masters with wooden rackets:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/sol/newsid_5150000/newsid_5157200/5157206.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&nol_storyid=5157206&bbcws=1
So I bet they’d be on board. I think that’s enough loudmouths to start a pretty noisy campaign. Everyone start painting signs, pronto.
Wonder what Fed would think of the idea? Not sure his professed love of grass would cancel out his desire to keep up the illusion of invincibility on the surface. Would be harder if he had to play more events.
I think Andy’s point, in 140 words or less was a good one. The valid question is why isn’t there a “more” important grass tourney before Wimbledon? You have IW and Miami right on top of each other and after the AO so they’re not warmups to anything except the end of the winter hard court season. MC while not optional is still a Masters and with Rome and Madrid that makes 3 Masters in a month before RG plus all the 250s 500′s. Then, Toronto and Cincy before the USO before heading to the part of the season no one cares about. So why shouldn’t there be a grass Masters before Wimby? Logic says RG and Wimby shouldn’t be so close together anyways but the perception becomes even more so that there’s way more clay tournaments than grass. Besides, if grass is important enough to the sport to merit a Grand Slam tournament it should be featured a little more prominently in the week to week.
That all (long winded sorry) being said. Make Queen’s a 500 event. There’s no logic not to. Halle is played the same week anyways so whoever goes to one doesn’t play the other.
Excellent point. If you’re going to make players bust ass to flip from clay to grass in the matter of seconds, shouldn’t you reward with some points, instead of the weasley “here’s some nice warm-up tournaments to play before. OK, good luck!”
I hate agreeing with Roddick, but, yeah, he has a point about there being no grass Masters. But as you stated Brodie, there’s no way the facilities qualify Queens (or any of the other grass tournaments for that matter) to be a Masters.
I am totally on board with making it a 500 event though, It’s ridiculous with the quality of players it attracts (everyone who matters usually plays here but Federer) that it hasn’t been upgraded to a 500 yet.
I feel like Andy’s point would carry more weight if he hadn’t come across so damn American complaining about there being too many clay tournaments. yeah, it would be great to have a proper grass season, but it sounds pretty self-serving to bitch about there being three clay Masters (which he sucks at and doesn’t even want to play) when there are six on hardcourt, plus the WTF (where he does pretty damn well for himself). I doubt he’d want a longer grass season if it had to be cut out of the American hardcourt tournaments. (I would love to see this, though. hell, move Cincinnati around in the schedule and play it on grass, nobody likes that tournament right now anyway. it could have novelty going for it, at least.)
Totally agree. It’s why that guy freaked and called him a dickhead. I think what he was trying to do was avoid an uproar by just noticing something, but as he carried on, it was more like “HEY ever notice the lack of grass tournaments? YEAH. JUST SAYIN.’” But sure, he’s better on grass than clay, it’s a little self serving, but nothing really THAT wrong with it. Though there are way more hard court tournaments than clay at the end of the day anyway.
Meretricula does have a good argument about Andy. The fact that the comment came out in the middle of clay court season where he hasn’t picked up a racket to play so far and historically has better results on grass than clay makes it seem self serving. But I still think the abundance of clay tournaments between Miami and RG vs. the # of grass before Wimbledon is somewhat skewed in favour of the clay. And this is coming from a diehard RafaKAD and an Andy fan. For the record, when Rafa plays (and wins) MC Barca Rome and Madrid and then complains about the season I think he’s hypocritical too!
Grass is such an important part of the tradition of the game and it has been reduced to near XO status (except for the glorious 2 weeks at SW19)
The tour really splits between Halle and Queens – I’d love to see them separated (on the calendar) with the former being a 500 and the latter a 1000.
The problem is that W and RG are so close together and either is difficult to move. Also tough to ask top players to continue on a surface after that season’s slam.
The big question? Does W move back or does RG move up? Either seems impossible.
Hardcourts are the most neutral surface. They are the most difficult to win because most players can play on it, unless grass and clay which are specialized surfaces.
But it also heavily favours power over movement. But yeah “the most neutral” I suppose I could live with.
Rafa wishes that there were less HC tourneys and more on the softer surfaces (grass & clay), because it’s easier on the body. Sure it may come across as a bit self-serving, but given the raft of injuries that both tours have had, if you cannot reduce the required number of tourneys, it’s reasonable to play on easier surfaces if you want to do a better job of preserving the health of the players.