I know this topic pops up a lot, but thought it was worth a thread...
how long now do we think until the LTA lays on more challenger tournaments? The futures are great for points from a GB perspective, but to really crack on and test themselves a lot of our players need to be playing at a high level more frequently..
Newcastle clay is rumoured to be upgraded to challenger.
The fact is we need sufficient GB players to automatically qualify them i.e inside top 250. So far we have Evo, Wardy, Cox and Smethurst. Need Kyle, Alex, Rice, Golding, Willis, Corrie, Klein, Hewitt, Broady etc to push on and climb the rankings.
-- Edited by paulisi on Friday 18th of July 2014 11:15:10 AM
The recent 15K events have been on grass, and some players may quite understandably prefer other options.
They have really been pretty weak 15K fields, probably weaker than many of the early year GB 10Ks, so even ignoring the surface not really much of a testing ground. Good for collecting points, but then some folk criticise players for points chasing ( to me, OK, as long as still part of a coherent development plan ).
Re GB challengers, certainly could do with more, particularly hardcourt ones. We have enough players who could gain direct entry or are good enough to be competitive and benefit from WCs.
It's difficult to schedule - there are a lack of challengers at the start of the season. Otherwise could put a hardcourt week after Segovia, but would compete against US hardcourt challengers.
