ITF launches ITF World Tennis Tour

JonH · All-time great

ITF launches ITF World Tennis Tour

Strongbow · All-time great

Joseph Heller would have been proud. wink

paulisi · Tennis legend

Leave the format as it is. If you are good enough, you will progress.
The aim was to cull the numbers. It is working.

If you want to increase the participation, put more events on....

wolf · Tennis legend

paulisi wrote:
Leave the format as it is. If you are good enough, you will progress.
The aim was to cull the numbers. It is working.

If you want to increase the participation, put more events on....

Lol, at the moment, if you don't have a ranking, or even if you do have a ranking you can't get into a tournament. How are you meant to start a career? Because of the reduced qualifying draws, main draw players are now forced to pay an entry fee, increasing costs. Qualifying players came and paid their $ every week, helping to pay for the tournament, where was the harm in that?

Michael D · All-time great

Strongbow wrote:
Joseph Heller would have been proud.

Indeed one of the few who would biggrin biggrin

Michael D · All-time great

wolf wrote:
paulisi wrote:
Leave the format as it is. If you are good enough, you will progress.
The aim was to cull the numbers. It is working.

If you want to increase the participation, put more events on....
Lol, at the moment, if you don't have a ranking, or even if you do have a ranking you can't get into a tournament. How are you meant to start a career? Because of the reduced qualifying draws, main draw players are now forced to pay an entry fee, increasing costs. Qualifying players came and paid their $ every week, helping to pay for the tournament, where was the harm in that?

Yes, the system is designed more and more to support forms of favouritism. If you really want to progress fairly rapidly in the women's game now you need 3 WCs into W25s, and then you will have a chance to progress beyond that. If you don't have those WCs, well good luck to you in a) gaining entry into W15s, then reaching the final/ winning the 4+ you need to get high enough in the points system to get into W25 qualifying.. then being able to get the 3 counters... and now after about a year, if you're very good and survived it, you might just about be able to have a go to climb the WTA ladder.

If he had been forced to do it this way, it would have been interesting to see how long it would have taken Dan Evans to get back... In the women now Mandy C is good enough to play WTA level, but will she be able to get back there? Jury is still out... but not on the nature of this new system, that jury has already given it's verdict not least because the pros cannot muster any argument thus far, whilst the cons have a very lengthy case already.

paulisi · Tennis legend

Mandy would have had to start at that level anyway.
If she plays to the same level, she will cruise through ITF and get her chance at 25ks through the reserved list.

paulisi · Tennis legend

wolf wrote:
paulisi wrote:
Leave the format as it is. If you are good enough, you will progress.
The aim was to cull the numbers. It is working.

If you want to increase the participation, put more events on....
Lol, at the moment, if you don't have a ranking, or even if you do have a ranking you can't get into a tournament. How are you meant to start a career? Because of the reduced qualifying draws, main draw players are now forced to pay an entry fee, increasing costs. Qualifying players came and paid their $ every week, helping to pay for the tournament, where was the harm in that?

Put on more tournaments.....

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

paulisi wrote:
wolf wrote:
paulisi wrote:
Leave the format as it is. If you are good enough, you will progress.
The aim was to cull the numbers. It is working.

If you want to increase the participation, put more events on....
Lol, at the moment, if you don't have a ranking, or even if you do have a ranking you can't get into a tournament. How are you meant to start a career? Because of the reduced qualifying draws, main draw players are now forced to pay an entry fee, increasing costs. Qualifying players came and paid their $ every week, helping to pay for the tournament, where was the harm in that?
Put on more tournaments.....

It's true, that would be fine, but the ITF doesn't put on events.

It's the federations who decide if they want to host an event or not.

i.e. GB and Canada (to name but two) have decided they don't wish to put on any 15ks this year - and there's nothing the ITF can do about it - the ITF can't just 'put on more tournaments' in GB and Canada.

Maybe the system could be changed so there was a mandatory participation but the ITF doesn't really have that clout i.e. if the rule was countries with Grand Slams have to host x number of ITFs (of each level), countries with an ATP Masters have to host y number etc., that sounds fine. But the ITF can't insist on that without the ATP/WTA playing ball (and the GS are outside anyway).

EddietheEagle · County player

There are seven governing bodies in tennis and therein lies the nub of the problem.

wolf · Tennis legend

paulisi wrote:
wolf wrote:
paulisi wrote:
Leave the format as it is. If you are good enough, you will progress.
The aim was to cull the numbers. It is working.

If you want to increase the participation, put more events on....
Lol, at the moment, if you don't have a ranking, or even if you do have a ranking you can't get into a tournament. How are you meant to start a career? Because of the reduced qualifying draws, main draw players are now forced to pay an entry fee, increasing costs. Qualifying players came and paid their $ every week, helping to pay for the tournament, where was the harm in that?
Put on more tournaments.....

As Coup said, the ITF does not put on tournaments. As I said, what has the harm in bigger qualifying draws where players payed their cash and helped faciltate the tournament?

Michael D · All-time great

paulisi wrote:
Mandy would have had to start at that level anyway.
If she plays to the same level, she will cruise through ITF and get her chance at 25ks through the reserved list.

We will see. At the moment no-one is cruising through the ITF, GB man or woman. Even Laura is being forced into playing W15s later this month because of the lack of W25 opportunities... and that's going to help her WTA ranking zero, and what the hell does she want an ITF ranking for? The dual rankings are a ridiculous system, but as Eddie notes, with 7 different governing bodies involved, I'm not expecting any sanity soon.

JonH · All-time great

As well as the dual rankings being my biggest bug bear, I also cant help but think the biggest issue in terms of players making a living or at least covering cost is the ridiculous global nature of the circuit. We have players playing all over the world and whilst they are free to do that if they can afford it, surely a more regionally structured series of tours would make more sense. Golf has that at the top level but also as they drop down - a GB golfer would start when ranked around 2000 playing European Challenger level events (whatever they call that tour) before moving up to European PGA events and then through to giving it a go in USA. (I realise Europe Tour travels to far flung places but the lower levels are certainly within Europe and I am sure there is a semi pro UK series of events as well). Tennis players ranked 2000 (in old money) flying off to Thailand or Brazil or wherever makes no sense financially; if someone could create some sort of regional structure then that has to be the way to go in the long term

christ · Futures level

JonH wrote:
As well as the dual rankings being my biggest bug bear, I also cant help but think the biggest issue in terms of players making a living or at least covering cost is the ridiculous global nature of the circuit. We have players playing all over the world and whilst they are free to do that if they can afford it, surely a more regionally structured series of tours would make more sense. Golf has that at the top level but also as they drop down - a GB golfer would start when ranked around 2000 playing European Challenger level events (whatever they call that tour) before moving up to European PGA events and then through to giving it a go in USA. (I realise Europe Tour travels to far flung places but the lower levels are certainly within Europe and I am sure there is a semi pro UK series of events as well). Tennis players ranked 2000 (in old money) flying off to Thailand or Brazil or wherever makes no sense financially; if someone could create some sort of regional structure then that has to be the way to go in the long term

... unless the object is to reduce the tour to just the free-spending elite. This appears, to the outsider, to be the aim of the latest reorganisation and it appears to be well on the way to achieving that aim.

paulisi · Tennis legend

Michael D wrote:
paulisi wrote:
Mandy would have had to start at that level anyway.
If she plays to the same level, she will cruise through ITF and get her chance at 25ks through the reserved list.
We will see. At the moment no-one is cruising through the ITF, GB man or woman. Even Laura is being forced into playing W15s later this month because of the lack of W25 opportunities... and that's going to help her WTA ranking zero, and what the hell does she want an ITF ranking for? The dual rankings are a ridiculous system, but as Eddie notes, with 7 different governing bodies involved, I'm not expecting any sanity soon.

Laura could use her protected ranking, I assume.