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seagull


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ITF announce major changes from 2019
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Detail here:

PRESS RELEASE
30 March 2017

ITF announces major restructuring of entry level of professional tennis

The ITF Board of Directors has approved a major restructuring of professional tennis at its entry level. The reform programme of changes will include a radical reduction in the number of truly professional players and the creation of a new global ITF Transition Tour in 2019 that will provide opportunities for the next generation of talented players to enter the professional pathway.

The reform programme is in response to a three-year ITF Player Pathway review of professional and junior tennis that included an analysis of player and event data from 2001-13, and a survey of more than 50,000 stakeholders. The review established that there are too many players trying to compete on the professional circuit; too few players are breaking even; and the age of these players is increasing. There are currently around 14,000 players competing in professional tennis events, almost half of whom do not earn any prize money.

The review also identified that it is taking longer for players to reach the top levels of the sport, and that many talented junior players experience considerable difficulty in transitioning to professional tennis.

In order to address these issues, the Board has approved the implementation in 2019 of a new ITF Transition Tour, featuring a new category of interim tournament at entry-level that will better aid the transition from junior to professional tennis and ensure a continued opportunity for players from any nation to join the player pathway. These tournaments will be held within a localised circuit structure that reduces costs and increases opportunity for players, and reduces staging costs for organisers.

Transition Tour tournaments will be created through the repositioning of the existing $15,000 (Level I) tournaments on the ITF Pro Circuit that will no longer be held as part of the Pro Circuit in 2019. Transition Tour tournaments will offer ITF Entry Points instead of ATP/WTA ranking points, with the two systems linked to ensure that the more successful players are able to use their ITF Entry Points to gain acceptance into ITF Pro Circuit tournaments.

The ITFs proposed restructuring will radically reduce the number of professional players competing for ATP and WTA ranking points. The ITFs extensive modelling work has led to a recommended professional player group of no more than 750 men and 750 women players. This new approach will introduce a clearer and more effective professional pathway and ensure that prize money levels at ITF Pro Circuit events are better targeted to ensure that more players can make a living from the professional game.

Players on the ITF Pro Circuit have already benefited from an extensive programme of prize money increases in 2016 and 2017 following the first part of the Player Pathway review, with total prize money increasing by around $1.5 million.

The ITFs proposed Transition Tour will complement this new professional group, ensuring that all other players, especially the next generation of emerging talent, continue to access local playing opportunities that can lead to entry into the professional game.

The ITF will now work closely with its member nations, ATP and WTA on the implementation of the Transition Tour, including confirmation of the technical requirements, tournament schedule and new ranking point structure.

ITF President David Haggerty said: The ITFs Player Pathway study is the most comprehensive review of professional tennis ever undertaken and has highlighted the considerable challenges at the base of our game. Over 14,000 players competed at professional level last year which is simply too many. Radical changes are needed to address the issues of transition between the junior and professional game, playing affordability, and tournament cost.

We have already taken an important step forward by increasing prize money levels at ITF Pro Circuit tournaments. The next step is to ensure the structure of professional tennis is fit for purpose through a targeted job opportunities approach that will create a smaller group of true professional players. At the same time it is imperative that we do not reduce the chance for players of any nation or background to start their journey towards the top 100. We believe that the introduction of a new entry level to the professional pathway will allow players to take the first steps towards becoming a future champion within a more targeted and affordable circuit structure. These changes will also ensure that players and their support team members can understand and measure their progress.

The ITF Player Pathway review was undertaken to fully understand the tournament structure below Tour level. The review looked at improving the entry for players into professional tennis; increasing prize money and the ability for more players to make a living; raising event standards with a focus on integrity protection; and ensuring developing nations have the opportunity to produce world class players.


http://www.itftennis.com/procircuit/...r-pathway.aspx


http://www.itftennis.com/juniors/org...r-pathway.aspx

 



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PaulM


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I am open minded about this, but a few initial thoughts:-

1 - re-naming and re-classifying the current $15k circuit as "non-professional" will do nothing to stop 1000s of players from across the world trying to break onto the pro circuit

2 - all this will do is turn those currently ranked outside the top 750 from having a WTA ranking to a Transition Tour ranking - so what?

3 - if the idea is to effectively combine the current $15k tournament with local money tournaments into a half-way house domestic circuit, that makes a lot of sense and will increase playing opportunities, but:

(a) there are countries where domestic money tournaments pay more in prize money that $15ks, how will that work?

(b) presumably different countries will run different numbers of tournaments, as per just now - will federations who stump up cash for pro events be willing to do so for non-pro, or will they pool their budget to afford more $25ks and upwards?

(c) if players want to move up to the main ITF tour, they need to get the maximum number of "Transition Tour" event points as possible. This means players will still schedule to play events abroad where they think they have best chance of picking up points, or if their domestic calendar is not great or particularly stacked. For example, if Sharm becomes a weekly "Transition Tour" event, it's still going to attract players from across the world to compete. The only difference is they are competing in an event with a different name for a different set of ranking points. If there is a run of Transition Tour events in West Africa, players will go there hoping for easy points. But, potentially, they will be competing for less money than they are at the moment (as the quid pro quo seemingly will be better prize money in the "true" professional events).

Basically, you will have a tennis circuit that is professional in all but name, with a fairly complex transition mechanism for entry lists into the true ITF events (e.g. how many Transition Tour points put you ahead on the entry list of someone with 1 Pro Tour point). I don't see how telling players they aren't competing in pro events will reduce the number giving it a go, but you actually have the potential to make the financial side of things worse if you are converting the $15ks into something else and reducing the prize money offered - either players rack up huge debts, or you make the Transition Tour only available with those who can fund travel to an even greater extent than is the case with $15ks where you might at least get enough back to cover one night in the hotel. It might increase domestic playing opportunities but again that will lead to huge deviations in standard worldwide, and players competing in weaker nations/regions (or those able to travel to compete in them) will benefit the most, and find it easiest to get the Transition Tour points they need to move up.

So, whilst being open minded, it's not clear to me at all how this will do anything to improve or smoothen the pathway up the ladder. I can't see how it will make things any different in reality to what operates at the moment by putting a fairly artificial line between events above $15k level. It seems to me to be a rebranding exercise and removing money from the bottom rung of pro tennis to put it more into the mid-way (not necessarily a bad thing at all in my view), but I can't see that it is transformational in any way.

One positive side effect may be it stops players "playing down" e.g. you are less likely to get top 200 players dropping into non-professional "Transition Tour" events, than you currently do with $15ks.

But that's just a first glance. It's all going to hinge on implementation and the details so I will not be totally down on the plans until we see how it might work in practice. Certainly very interesting, and I will be cautiously optimistic that it will be a good move!



-- Edited by PaulM on Thursday 30th of March 2017 03:06:55 PM

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skibbarriz


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Ha, I had to do a double take. I see you placed the same post on tennisforum. Well, that's your alias busted :)

It reads like a good plan. I can totally understand the ITF's desire to reduce the amount of players recognised as professional. The proof will be in how it plays out. I'm cautiously a fan of the proposals.

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Madadman


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As far as I read it you will get an itf ranking now which consists of 15k's up to GS. This ITF ranking can be used to gain entry into 15 & 25ks. You will now have a ATP ranking which consists of points earned in 25k's through to GS. This can be used to enter challenger and ATP events.
Will be interesting how it works as someone has said it will stope players playing down as per my point about Brydan in this weeks Indonesia thread.
I can't see this stopping how many players attempt to make it, will just mean that less players get an ATP ranking.

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Jaggy1876


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Players in Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt will feel this the most where their top players boost their ranking by cleaning up in their home ITFs. I'm going to have another read of it again and comment further but it seems to be trying to give a more realistic rankings base rather than the current one which does hinder juniors on the way up. Whether this makes it even harder or not is open to interpretation.

There are too many players ranked that probably shouldn't be in some respects but we shouldn't be preventing or blocking people that want to play on the other hand thus creating an even more elitist sport. I ll think about this.

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Sim


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If there is "promotion" from the Tranisition Tour to the Professional tour then surely there has to be relegation as well otherwise the number of Professional players will just keep increasing. So how will that work, at the end of each year all players with less than x ranking points get relegated. Then you need some rules on how many times a player can be promoted and relegated to stop them clogging up the Transition tour preventing younger players coming through.

Could work but will be complicared especially once you take injuries into account.

What about Maria Sharapova? Would she have to complete on the transition tour to earn enough points to get promoted?

Maybe should be introduced next week winkwink

 



-- Edited by Sim on Friday 31st of March 2017 07:25:34 PM

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seagull


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skibbarriz wrote:

Ha, I had to do a double take. I see you placed the same post on tennisforum. Well, that's your alias busted :)

It reads like a good plan. I can totally understand the ITF's desire to reduce the amount of players recognised as professional. The proof will be in how it plays out. I'm cautiously a fan of the proposals.

 You never heard of copy and paste?



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wimdledont


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Well, it is certainly bust, and so it needs fixing. Various thoughts...

1. I can't see the problem with half the players getting no prize money. You get prizemoney as a R1 15k loser, so these are non-earners all local wildcards, losing in qualies, and presumably quite thrilled to get a chance to compete agianst the pros, and losing their entry fee and bus fare, and so what?

2. The real problem is that since the circuit was set up in 1984, cumulative inflation is 300%+, while the bottom rung has just seen the first 50% increase from 10k to 15k, which is 1/2 the money in real terms, up from 1/3, but still inadequate.

3. The real beneficiaries of the ITF tour are airlines. Many players pay out as much in airfares as they win in prizemoney. So localised entry could be a very welcome step.

4. If there is promotion from an entry level tour to a pro tour, there must also be relegation.

5. The whole system is very conservative, stacked against newcomers by seedings, based on the results of all matches played over 12 months, even more so when juniors are restricted in the number of matches they can play.

6. Serena earned $2,701,370 for winning the Australian Open.

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Albatross


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How do you think this will affect those Juniors at the top of the rankings, the likes of  Potapova, Juvan,Swan will they be able to play more transition tournaments or will they still have the current restrictions on number of tournaments they can play whilst they are still  Juniors.  Will this encourage/enable the top Juniors to leave the junior circuit/dip into the women tour when they are ready earlier? I think they need to keep the Junior Road to "the end of the year" a valuable target for the Juniors, i.e. JE and WC etc for those that are top ranked juniors.



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paulisi


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The press release is not very clear.
It sound like they are re-branding the ITF tournaments.
In reality anyone with a ranking capable of playing 25k or higher is guaranteed tour competition unless there is a relegation format that has not been announced.

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Albatross


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If that is right it seems that there would be  a sort of intermediate tier of competitions prior to the "main ITF tour", for those aspiring juniors/tour professionals to access as they see fit. It seems like a sifting process.It is all a bit of a puzzle. 



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Bob in Spain


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I was asking Alex Ward about these changes today and like me, his response was that he doesn't really understand how it is all going to work. His Spanish coach didn't even know about the changes.

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Strongbow


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plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose



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JonH


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It looks like the ITF have now put the meat on the bones of this at last:

www.itftennis.com/news/278962.aspx

On the mens side, shadow rankings will operate next season and from 2019 $25k events will count in both tours, with presumably from 2020 only Challenger and above counting towards ATP tour and rankings and places being reserved for successful transition tour players.

In ladies, $25k events will continue to count towards WTA rankings.

It includes a points table for the ITF Transition Tour Entry List as well...



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JonH
Bob in Spain


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It will be very interesting to see what difference this makes - if at all. Two things that I have picked out as positive are 1) Ranking points for Challenger Qualies and 2) Banning high ranked players from the lower events. Marsel Ilhan will be distraught though wink



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