Tie Break Tens

flamingowings · All-time great

Tie Break Tens

EddietheEagle · County player

It would be fascinating to see exactly what sums the LTA are paying out in appearance fees and from where the money is being sourced. The facts aren't known as far as I'm aware.

JonH · All-time great

Appearance money has always been there in tennis - top players make more in appearance money than in prizemoney. Similar in golf, Tiger Woods once got $1m for playing in Dubai for 4 days I seem to recall, at one of the European Tour events in the early season.

It is much the same in other walks of life. I live next door to the family of a guy who married a well known British female Singer, had several charting singles and albums, Grammy awards, Brits if I recall, BBC Musical Voice of the Year a while back etc etc. She isnt Rihanna or anyone that big but she got paid a £100k fee for flying over to Switzerland to appear at some birthday bash for a billionaire, went literally for a day, he loved her music, came back next day with a nice little pay packet.

I don't begrudge these events paying top players big money - the top players deserve it because they bring fans and sponsorship and news into the event. But I think once you get below a select few (the global stars, Fed, Djoko, Nadal, Murray, Wawrinka, Dimitrov, Sascha Zverev, Kyrgios, Delpo, and then a few who are big names regionally or in their own country (Nishikori maybe, Goffin in parts of the world etc) then there arent many who can genuinely command or deserve those fees. So I struggle with top 30 players genuinely being able to command those fees - really? Do they really add much to the event at all other than the event saying "we have 4 top 30 players this year" etc.

I cant see Nottingham paying money to get top players in - Queens I can and it doesnt surprise me but outside those named above I would be very surprised if anyone commanded a decent fee. Andy signed up to play there til the end of his career for a very big sum (although it might not be a very long contract I guess) if I recall. Queens competes with Halle for attention that week and for the top players; fed has always played Halle (presumably because the pay him big sums) so getting Nadal is a big deal for Queens to try and achieve.

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

No objection to the fees per se, although it would be interesting to see how many of the names turned up for tournaments if the fees were dropped. But I agree with Eddie, they shouldn't be shrouded in secrecy.

JonH · All-time great

So long as it isnt secret to the relevant tax authorities!

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Didn't Nadal not show up one year, because of the UK tax rules changing and they demanded if visiting for over two weeks (i.e. Queens + Wimbledon) then he would be due them a cut on his global image rights, not just the prize/appearance money he made in the UK?

Like the Optimist says, Queen's is an ideal warm up event for Wimbledon and awards 500 atp ranking points. If they dropped all appearance money, would Andy no longer play, would the rest of the top20 all head to Halle? Leaving top20-50 to potentially win 500 points.

Would be fascinating to see the P&L for the whole event.

skibbarriz · Strong Club Player

Look at this cast list for the Madrid event.

https://www.tiebreaktens.com/madrid/

Do you get 8 players of that status per draw, all of them knowing only one of them is going to receive a penny? Is is that they really like the event and appreciate that money is also going to charity. I want to believe that.

If so, it really sits against the appearance fee culture.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

I'm hosting a tiebreak tens competition tonight in London, with the England game on in the clubhouse for the players being knocked out after the main draw and consolation draws. It had never occurred to me to hold a tournament of this format, but should be a good night. A quick fire singles competition, where a 16 man draw plus consolation should be all over in 2 hours (by my calculations):

lta.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/draw.aspx

JonH · All-time great

great event - well done Gareth Clarke and great idea!

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I don't know if there's any other comments about the Dubai Tie-break tens so we should have a bit because it was this week, it's a new format, very entertaining, good money (£100,000 to the winner) AND there were TWO Brits in the 8-man draw.

Dan Evans (who lives there, so was presumably very happy to be playing 'local')

And Simon Roberts - yes, who?

Roberts is a super lean, fit-looking 38 year-old who was 747 in the world in 2005, has won zillions of Lancashire titles, including in 2019, has 37 titles as Touch Tennis Champion, as in ex-World Number 1, and is currently a High Performance coach in Dubai.

Anyway, it's all great fun.

Simon lost his first TB to Taylor Fritz (not too surprising, but he won a few points too)

Dan beat Ramanathan 10-7 in his first one.

Gael put up a great show.

And then Dan lost to Taylor Fritz in the semis, 7-10, after leading all the first part of it, went from 4-2 up to 4-7 down

Gael lost his semi, suffering a real dodgy linecall, a mis-hit, a nasty let serve (there's no let in TB 10s), a linesman who was in the way, but it was all a laugh (sort of)

Great final, with Fritz losing to Zizou Bergs, who went pretty lights out, especially at the backend of the TB, to win 11-9

It's all on, for anyone who wants to skip through and get some highlights:

www.youtube.com/watch