Andy's programme for 2010

timmoore46 · Admin:moderator + Club Coach

Andy's programme for 2010

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Well, the Hopman cup followed by the AO for starters. . .

seagull · Hall of fame

He is playing Marseille (on the official website) and almost certainly Rotterdam

Tennis36 · Masters Series Champion

anyone got any idea whether he is playing sydney

seagull · Hall of fame

Nope - unless he asks for a wild card

Tennis36 · Masters Series Champion

seagull wrote:

Nope - unless he asks for a wild card

thought the deadline is on tuesday or wednesday

seagull · Hall of fame

Well ok unless he enters in the next few hours..he is not entered yet

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

I can't see him wanting to play Sydney, just the week before the AO. It would be too late to affect the AO seedings, wouldn't it? And the top players hardly ever play the week before a slam.

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Marseille added to the first post.

Edit - and the rest of the early schedule as per am.com!

-- Edited by Madeline on Friday 8th of January 2010 10:58:02 PM

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Andy's official schedule is still showing Andy as playing Monte Carlo, but he is not on the entry list. Maybe hoping for a wild card if he does not do well at Indian Wells and Miami?

clayfan · Lower Club Player

I am amazed Andy wanted to duck out of Monte Carlo. He played an excellent match last year against Nadal which was widely aclaimed by the French public and led to a good reception at the French Open. With a lot of points to defend, even allowing for rule changes, he risked alienating the French crowd and TV by not appearing. Playing in this tournament is very good PR for Roland Garros. Since it became somewhat optional this tournament is waiting to see if any of the top players show.

Now that Andy is back with his girlfriend, I wonder if his mind was not fully on the tennis for the last few weeks or months. He needs to get back on track and for the next 2 months it will be on clay. Will Corretja be helping this year? Andy really does need to concentrate to do well on clay and as we know he has not really been doing that since the Aussie Open. But glad he is more settled again in his personal life.

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

I think he expected to go far in Miami and then would not have had much time to prepare for clay, so as he bombed out of Miami he has taken the wild card which was being held for him.

It just doesn't pay for players to enter non-mandatory tournaments if there is any chance at all that they won't be ready to play - the punishments for withdrawing from 500's (which MC ranks as, even though it gives 1000 points) are so strict.

First post amended.

clayfan · Lower Club Player

I have been looking at the rules for Monte Carlo. It is still classified as a 1000 event. The rules are a bit vague on which Masters tournaments can count as a player only has to play in 8 of the 9. If they play Monaco, as well as the rest of the Masters series, it can count as a 500 tournament. As it stands it looks like players may choose to play Monaco but miss another 1000 masters tournament. I had thought that all the others were mandatory. It is quite confusing though, so I am probably wrong!

Last year there was only a week between Miami and Monaco, yet Andy played. I recon he decided to ditch it and play the other 1000 tournaments this time, simply because he could. Perhaps he planned to substitute Barcalona, I have not checked. I have to say he really needs to enter more tournaments at the moment to get more matchplay. Thankfully Monaco have kept a wild card for him and Roger, saying Andy had yet to finalise his clay court schedule!

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, I too am rather confused as to whether when the ATP talks about 8 mandatory 1000 tournaments it is including or excluding Monte Carlo which has a bit of a strange status in being able to count to your "500" tournaments but still getting 1000 points.

I do notice that players like Del Potro that have missed both Indian Wells and Miami have been given zero pointers for both of those, sort of indicating that they really are mandatory, although I guess could be annulled if they played Monte Carlo.

I think the 8 mandatory though does mean the 8 "true" 1000 Masters so there is no option in these, although would be really good if anyone could say for definite.

By the way, there is of course only a week between Miami and Monte Carlo this year too, it is just that Andy made it two weeks for himself

steven · Tennis legend

Unless something has changed this year, the mandatory Masters 1000 tournaments are IW, Miami, Rome, Madrid, Canada, Cincy, Shanghai and Paris. Monte Carlo counts as a 500 tournament in every sense except that you get twice as many points per round as you do for a 500 tournament. So, you can't substitute playing in MC for a missed mandatory event.

It is possible to get away with missing mandatory events, but only if you have:

- played 600 main tour matches as of 1 Jan of the year concerned
- had 12 years of service (counting year 1 as the first year in which the player played 12 tournaments offering ranking points, though they don't have to have played 12 in each subsequent year)
- reached 31 years of age as at 1 Jan of the year concerned

For each one of those criteria you meet, you can miss a Masters without penalty and if you meet all three (like Santoro last year), you can pick and choose with complete freedom.

Of the top 8, Fed met condition 1 last year and I think he meets conditions 1 & 2 this year. Duckboy definitely meets condition 1 and probably condition 2. Kolya has now played over 600 matches too. Rafa is the only other member of the current top 8 who has played more than 500 matches.