ITF launches ITF World Tennis Tour

RedSquirrel · Satellite level

ITF launches ITF World Tennis Tour

Elegant Point · Satellite level

'Geoff Grant joins the podcast to discuss the details of the new ITF 2019 transition tour, which is a part of a major restructuring of professional tennis. Grant and Wertheim discuss how the creation of the transition tourwhich includes a new worldwide tournament structure between the ITF, ATP and WTA and is expected to reduce the number of professional players with ATP and WTA rankings from 3,000 players to approximately 750 men and 750 womenwill impact tennis, at the professional, college and junior levels, particularly in relation to match-fixing'

soundcloud.com/beyond-the-baseline/discussing-the-2019-itf-transition-tour-with-geoff-grant

Suggestions that the new ITF Tour structure will do nothing to aid the development of young players; will force more Internationals to follow the US college route (to the dismay of many US parents) and could lead to the rise of an alternative professional league.............

wolf · Tennis legend

That was a hard podcast to listen too, especially the host was completely clueless and did a horrible job of painting the picture of what he was talking about (except making it excruciatingly clear it was nothing to do with Serena Williams or Roger Federer) basically because he didn't even try to!

TomTraubert · Futures level

it the oficial sports ilistrated and tennis channel podcast!
but at least they covered poor old stevie johnson ad nauseam
i mentshioned it last week in another thred becasue it seemed so bad almost iresponsibel from such a major tennis broadcaster
glad at least one other person had a similar impressiun

wolf · Tennis legend

The main problems with this system I see are..

Qualifying draws sizes being cut too 24 at futures. For me this is the biggest problem as it makes it very hard (impossible?) to start your career without a ranking as you can't get into a tournament. There are now 3474 ITF ranked male players 2413 female players with only 56 spots per tournament each week. I don't see the upside in doing this. It costs $40 to enter a tournament. If your cutting the number of entrants, your cutting the number of entry fees collected making it harder for hosts to break even.
Having seperate ranking lists. This means if you play 50% futures and 50% challengers you could end up in no man's land on either list. If only there was a way to have one big long list....
Players being accepted with ATP/ WTA ranking being accepted into futures before players with ITF ranking. This means someone with one challenger first round win has priority on someone with five $15K tournament wins. Makes sense. Although to be fair, with the stupidness of having two ranking lists I don't see a solution to this.
Only 4 player ATP challenger qualifying events. I fear with late drop outs your going to end up with zero player qualifying as everyone is just going to get shunted into main draw with no alternates to replace them as not enough players are going to be hanging around to replace them and you might even end up with byes in the main draw. I reckon next weeks Noumea challenger is going to be interesting. Also the chances of players losing even in the first round of qualifying getting into the main draw as a lucky loser must be pretty high with 48 potential pull outs.

nickw811 · Social player

I've just written an article about the changes and what Greg Howe thinks. Fair to say, he doesn't think it's a good idea for the sport. I definitely agree! thebigracket.co.uk/2018/12/27/are-the-upcoming-itf-changes-a-hindrance-to-tennis/

Elegant Point · Satellite level

Interesting article written by nickw811 especially 'are the ITF right to make the changes?' I am in the no camp! I am also interested in why they have made these changes and why does it seem to have been implemented so quickly?

The Guardian suggested there has been 'a tsunami' of match fixing, but as far as I can determine most of this occurs at the 'lower levels' of ITF tournaments and the betting companies are losing money...... So are the changes and the speed at which they have been applied to benefit the sport or to appease the betting companies who (I believe) sponsor/have a financial input into tournaments?

www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/apr/25/tennis-serious-integrity-problem-betting-match-fixing-independent-review

Quick to spot a gap in the market, UTR are holding a UTR tournament running in parallel to the LA Futures for 'players who lose in the qualies or do not get in to the tournament' Not sure why players looking for ranking points would want to play in a UTR event? To my mind UTR rating is only useful for those looking for a scholarship to the US or players looking for match plays.

www.myutr.com/events/1079.

Madadman · Top national player

So the new atp rankings are out and it goes down to 677. Will be interesting how many it goes down to in a years time when no 25ks are involved and its just challeneger points. Id guess this will drop to below 600.

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes it will be interesting. 5 of our initial 17 ATP ranked are 'only' on the list due to 25K/25K+H counters.

The 12 with any challenger points include newbie Jan Choinski and the retired Alex Ward.

TomTraubert · Futures level

atp & kermode must be loving this
they forced itf to make changes under thret to brake away from them completeley so that they can concentrate even more money to they coffers
and now those changes have been done everyone is blaming the itf and the atp getting off scott free
new rules do exactly what the atp demanded - cull the # of pros - they must be laughing themselves sick this morning and having trebles all round

RedSquirrel · Satellite level

Madadman wrote:

So the new atp rankings are out and it goes down to 677. Will be interesting how many it goes down to in a years time when no 25ks are involved and its just challeneger points. Id guess this will drop to below 600.

The number of players with an ATP ranking should increase through the year as with an extra round there are now more players getting main draw points at a Challenger event, although you don't get ATP points for qualifying in a Challenger any more. I think the expectation is most of those that gain 25K ATP points this year will have points from Challengers by the end of the year.

-- Edited by RedSquirrel on Monday 31st of December 2018 08:45:20 AM

indiana · Tennis legend

However many more players get challenger points each week, an increase in ATP ranked players will of course be dependant on a good number of these additional points scorers being players without existing challenger+ points.

Be interesting how it balances out over time, particularly the opportunities for very good young players though indeed for all trying to make progress including late developers.

wolf · Tennis legend

wolf wrote:
It costs $40 to enter a tournament. If your cutting the number of entrants, your cutting the number of entry fees collected making it harder for hosts to break even.

On this point, some tweets from Karue Sell (ATP WR 437/ITF WR 99)...

I just found out that the https://mobile.twitter.com/KarueSell/status/1080325246572363776

@ITF_Tennis

is charging a 40 dollars entry fee in every future now, even for main draw players. Like come on, guys. There's already no money in futures, have some decency. That money makes much more of a difference for the players than for you.

Yep I'm sure I was just charged an entry fee when I picked up my prize money hahah so yeah it's kinda insane. They always charged 40 for qualies but never for main draw. Now they are making up for the smaller qualy draw by charging main draw players..

I personally never knew you didn't get charged an entry fee in futures main draw (you definately had to pay in doubles at least) so would be good to get confirmed, although it would be strange if Karue had realised this before.

JonH · All-time great

A venue called Piranmar in Argentina is hosting 23 M15 level events from April onwards this season. More than whole of GB tally in total.

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

This was posted on Twitter today

These are the entries for next week for an 18 year old, national junior champion, with a world ranking of 1900. First year out of juniors. What is he supposed to play in? Can you advise please, @ITF_Tennis

Strikes me that the changes have made it much harder for players to get onto the ladder as they make the transition from Juniors. Early days. I know, but the signs are not good.