Week 44 - ITF ($25K) - Mount Gambier, Australia - Hard

philwrig · Hall of fame

RE: Week 44 - ITF ($25K) - Mount Gambier, Australia - Hard

steven · Tennis legend

Mel lost 4 & 3 to 2nd seed Holland. Not a bad week for her (at least by recent standards) though.

PockyTastic · Futures level

Hopefully Mel is slowly regaining her confidence. It's taken a bit of a beating over the past couple of years.

As for Em, after a promising spring, her year has yet again been marred by injury. Hopefully she can recover and be in the position to defend the majority of the points she won in the first 5 months of this year.

-- Edited by PockyTastic on Friday 4th of November 2011 11:13:24 AM

Ratty · County player

I find the principle of going to these tournaments a bit mystifying.

There are 9 Australian $25K's over a period of 3 months. So an English player has to (i) get to Australia, (ii) stay in hotels for that length of time, and (iii) travel about Australia - which is a very large country.

You have surely to be looking at a cost of £500-£750 per week, maybe £10,000 in total for 13 weeks. The mental strain of living out of a suitcase for extended periods must also be fearsome.

If you won every single tournament it might just be worthwhile financially.

Otherwise it seems a bizarre thing to do.

Shhh · Challenger level

Quarterfinal:
BENGSON (AUS) / CALDERWOOD (AUS) defeated SOUTH (GBR) / WEBLEY-SMITH (GBR) (1) 6-3 3-6 [10-7]
BAI (AUS) / STARR (AUS) defeated MURRAY (GBR) / WHYBOURN (GBR) (4) 6-4 3-6 [12-10]

steven · Tennis legend

Re. Emily - it's pretty impressive that despite the injury problems she's had this year, she's likely to end it in the top 250 and very close to her career high. A pity that he points to defend in 2012 are goingto be skewed so heavily towards the first half of the year though.

Re. Ratty's comment - I don't know how they justify the cost either but my guess would be that accommodation and travel is not as expensive in Australia as your figures imply, especially if they share, and if a group of them go over together (judging from twitter messages I noticed in passing, they were all keen to be joined by as many other Brits as possible), the long time away from home becomes just about bearable.

Mel: "Lost a tough match today 4 and 3 in 2 and a half hours. about 10 deuces each game. bit of a killer but another good match in the bag."

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Ratty wrote:
I find the principle of going to these tournaments a bit mystifying.
There are 9 Australian $25K's over a period of 3 months. So an English player has to (i) get to Australia, (ii) stay in hotels for that length of time, and (iii) travel about Australia - which is a very large country.
You have surely to be looking at a cost of £500-£750 per week, maybe £10,000 in total for 13 weeks. The mental strain of living out of a suitcase for extended periods must also be fearsome.
If you won every single tournament it might just be worthwhile financially.
Otherwise it seems a bizarre thing to do.

To me the idea of going round Australia for 13 weeks and playing some tennis seems quite appealing...

On a more serious note, I'm sure anyone who is an established professional tennis player is well used to living away from home for long periods.

Financially, with a decent run of results they will probably break even (e.g. results of 1 win, 1 final, 2 semis, 2 quarters, 2 L16 and 1 L32 would generate $9,400 plus doubles earnings). This doesn't make a lot of financial sense then unless the player's funding is determined by their ranking (which is at least indirectly true) and they increase their ranking by playing the events.

Peter too · Tennis legend

Would you prefer to play outdoors in an Australian Spring and early summer or indoors in late autumn and winter in UK? Would you prefer to spend your spare time in exotic locations with sunshine, surfing beaches and new sights or the dark, damp streets of a UK winter?

indiana · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
Ratty wrote:

I'm afraid I just can't get at all interested about players travelling 12,000 miles at god knows what expense to try to pick up cheap points in relatively weak tournaments.

Nice to see Ratty checking up on how things going in spite of the above at the start of their Australian time back in Alice Springs.
Havng a couple of years ago spent 3 months travelling out of a suitcase, with a few days here, a week there ( perfectly OK if you are enjoying yourself, and as said the players are used to being away for some time if this rather more than usual ), including in Australia, whilst not sharing accomodation, I would certainly think the week to week costs could be quite a bit less than he suggests.

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 4th of November 2011 03:07:04 PM