Queen's Wild Cards To Dimitrov, Nishikori, Grosjean.

Drew · May 26, 2009

RE: Queen's Wild Cards To Dimitrov, Nishikori, Grosjean.

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

Ward's WC was expected, but a bit surprised to see Josh given one having not exactly set the world alight this season. That said, good luck to him with it and hopefully he can get a good draw and take advantage of it.

The final WC is up for grabs, but I'm not expecting it to go to Evans... given his poor performance last year and the fact he might still not be a favourite at the LTA, they'll probably ask him to qualify here. And if he is getting a WC to Wimbledon, then he'll probably get one to Eastbourne as well, so three WC's may be too many.

steven · Tennis legend

It seems like a bizarre decision to give a WC to Josh if they're only giving out two, when both Boggo and Evo have picked up more than twice as many ranking points as him this year, the former is ranked well above him and the latter is a young up-and-coming player who has won a Challenger this year, but I guess we need to wait until we know the WC allocations for the grass court season as a whole before being able to judge whether they make any sense overall.

Remember of course that Queen's WCs are only much use to them financially, given that this year a R1 win at Queen's (probably against a top 100 player) is only worth as many points as a R1 win in a 35K+h Challenger, and winning two rounds at Queen's (which probably means beating a top 50 player) gets you less points than winning a 15K Future. bleh

(qualifying gets you the same points as qualifying for a 75K Challenger)

-- Edited by steven on Tuesday 26th of May 2009 09:58:12 PM

Ben W · Social player

I understand that the Queens points are so low has it has been rated an ATP 250 and has a main draw larger than 32

What I don't understand is why it was decided that queens should be and ATP 250 not a 500

Firstly Queens usally has as good line ups or better than most ATP 500s because of the fact that is is one of the few grass court events and gives the players a week's recovery before Wimblodon.
There are no ATP 500s on Grass which seems odd and surely if there was one it would be queens due to its history and support.
Also because it has a draw larger than 32 by making it an ATP 250 and not a ATP 500 makes the early round points pathetically small, much smaller than Eastbourne as Steven points out.

Finally I think Queens was worth 250 points last year so it is effectively worth half the points for the win this year due to the points doubling of all last years points at the start of this year.

So does anyone know why there is Queens was not given ATP 500 status??????????

steven · Tennis legend

At a guess it's because the financial commitment required to stage a 500 event is significantly more than that required to stage a 250 event and they know that Queen's will attract a strong field even if it's only a 250 event, simply because of the surface and its position in the calendar. They get away with staging the pre-Wimby grass court Challenger as a bog-standard 50K for much the same reason.

I imagine they would rather spend as little as possible on the mandatory fees and prize money in order to free up money for use as appearance fees to attract as many of the very top players as possible. (don't get me started on appearance fees!)

As a result, the 'Notbiton' Challenger and Queen's probably require more effort per ranking point than just about any other tournaments in the calendar, which of course means that as well as there being far too few grass court tournaments, the ones held more than a week before Wimby are harder to get points from tournaments held on other surfaces, which seems blatantly unfair to grass court specialists.

It all just shows how ridiculous it is that the only thing that influences the number of ranking points available at a tournament is the prize money available.

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 27th of May 2009 12:06:50 AM

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

When the ATP was commissioning the 500 events last year it invited any event that wanted to become a 500 to apply for it, and after all the events that applied were considered, they then made the decision on the 9 or 10 (can't remember which) events that were going to become a 500 event.

However, none of the grass court events applied to become a 500 event, so as a result, there is no 500 event on grass.

Because Queens didn't want to be a 500 event, stating that it felt confident it could retain the same quality of players attending the event without having to increase the prize money, it had to remain a 500 a 250 event.

Because Queens is a 64 player draw (excluding the byes), and only 250 points available, it means that for the first couple of rounds, and for qualifying, the points are very limited (all 250 events have the same number of points for qualifying, and there is a set number of points for each round in 250 events, so they have to squeeze it at the R32 level to keep with the ATP rules), thus, they cannot give any more points for a first round win.

The problem comes because a) Queens didn't apply to be a 500 event (it surely would have got it if it had) and b) it is a 64 player draw and has to have the same number of points as a 32 player draw does.

It's the organisers at Queens who have caused this problem, which unfortunately means that even if the Brits do win a match, they don't benefit from him very much.

Count Zero · Tennis legend

perhaps if Stella had stayed involved they would have been interested in pushing the event further, but the LTA blatantly wont, i think we have seen with the treatment of 'Nobition' challenger over the years, the fact that they seemed to lose money over the run up events to Wimby also spoke a lot.

Silver · County player

I'm glad someone mentioned the 250 status. I think that's pretty poor if I'm honest. Granted, Queen's has the pedigree and it's managed to get the stars but the ranking points on offer are pretty wishy-washy. I dislike the idea that they've not needed to make it a bigger event because they already get players like Nadal and Djokovic... ARGH, it makes me so mad! They might as well do away with grass courts altogether if that's how they feel about it.

The Hoose · Satellite level

Tennis should ultimately be a competition between the best players, with the winner getting a trophy to recognise theír achievement. If a tournament can manage to do this without throwing too much money and ranking points at it - simply because players want to be there - I find that quite refreshing in a way.

(I won't mention appearance money and the fact that it's the only way players get to practise on grass before the tournament they really want to take part in...)

-- Edited by The Hoose on Wednesday 27th of May 2009 01:44:02 PM

Salmon · Tennis legend

ForeverDelayed wrote:

Nishikori is out until the US Open with a stress fracture in his elbow, so obviously won't be playing at Queens or Wimbledon.

cry I really wanted him to resume playing right after Wimbledon.

steven · Tennis legend

The Hoose wrote:
Tennis should ultimately be a competition between the best players, with the winner getting a trophy to recognise theír achievement. If a tournament can manage to do this without throwing too much money and ranking points at it - simply because players want to be there - I find that quite refreshing in a way.

(I won't mention appearance money and the fact that it's the only way players get to practise on grass before the tournament they really want to take part in...)

(Ignoring the things in brackets too wink

) ... so do I - what annoys me is the way the rankings only reflect the prize money on offer.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Silver wrote:

[...] I dislike the idea that they've not needed to make it a bigger event because they already get players like Nadal and Djokovic...

According to the denizens of MTF, both NoDjo & JWT have defected to Halle! disbelief

The Hoose · Satellite level

Yes, I read an article a couple of weeks ago that said Djokovic and Tsonga were playing Halle.

More chance of beating Federer than Nadal?

-- Edited by The Hoose on Thursday 28th of May 2009 12:09:36 PM

Silver · County player

Oooooooh, have they really? Either way, it's Federer on grass... or Nadal on grass...

Count Zero · Tennis legend

possibly Halle is offering more appearance money now? sensing an opportunity to take away from Queens and become the premier pre-wimby event.