2022 British Tournaments

Christine · Intermediate Club Player

RE: 2022 British Tournaments

paulisi · Tennis legend

JonH comes home wrote:
Christine wrote:
Nothing in the South West either, but then there never is
Doesnt Barnstaple get the odd one and I am sure I have seen Exeter and Taunton and Bath have events here and there - I think on the British Tour there are one or two, but ITF definitely missing

Barnstaple was scheduled for last year, but got cancelled.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Christine wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
Christine wrote:
Nothing in the South West either, but then there never is
Doesnt Barnstaple get the odd one and I am sure I have seen Exeter and Taunton and Bath have events here and there - I think on the British Tour there are one or two, but ITF definitely missing
Barnstaple has a rare appearance on the calendar - remember seeing Katy Dunne as a junior getting very cross with herself! Think there was also a men's event more recently which I couldn't attend. Others are British Tour as you say

The big one of course used to be Bristol where they played an ATP event for a few years, and before that had a big history (was it the Wills Open, sponsored by cigarette company?) over many years - Gordon Forbes writes about Bristol in his marvellous "A Handful of Summers" - I think it was effectively the West of England Open.

I remember going to see a Davis Cup match there, I think the club was called Redlands, GB v Finland, our team I think include Bates and Castle and Lendl played an exhibition match versus Petchey as well. Of course, it was the venue for the infamous GB v Romania match when Nastase got himself - I think - disqualified or should have been!

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

The big £10k Pro UTR event in Cardiff will take place at the start of January.

I expect quite a lot of our players will be there.

Other dates are available on Barry Fulcher's links:

twitter.com/Barry_Fulcher

paulisi · Tennis legend

I think the LTA need to look at putting on a few UK women 15ks.
There are plenty of men ready for 25ks and will play domestically, but I don't suspect too many ladies inside the top 500 will.
Also there is a lack of players in the 700+ ranking on the women's side still plying their trade, so we need to build up that pyramid.

indiana · Tennis legend

paulisi wrote:
I think the LTA need to look at putting on a few UK women 15ks.
There are plenty of men ready for 25ks and will play domestically, but I don't suspect too many ladies inside the top 500 will.
Also there is a lack of players in the 700+ ranking on the women's side still plying their trade, so we need to build up that pyramid.

Indeed.

We have talked before about the lack of GB 15Ks for both men and women. But yes, there is a particular issue for our women.

Quite apart from us currently needing to give more lower ranked women a leg up there is the ongoing issue that women's 25Ks are generally relatively a fair bit stronger than men's. The many more points available attract stronger fields and we have seen plenty examples of two qualifying round domestic 25Ks with our poor players getting routinely thumped by relatively well ranked foreign qualifying seeds. Often someone will come on and bemoan the list of results but they are usually very understandable.

Having nothing below 25Ks, which again in relative rankings quality are generlly somewhere in between men's 25Ks and challengers, is very poor.

SuperT · Futures level

indiana wrote:
paulisi wrote:
I think the LTA need to look at putting on a few UK women 15ks.
There are plenty of men ready for 25ks and will play domestically, but I don't suspect too many ladies inside the top 500 will.
Also there is a lack of players in the 700+ ranking on the women's side still plying their trade, so we need to build up that pyramid.
Indeed.
We have talked before about the lack of GB 15Ks for both men and women. But yes, there is a particular issue for our women.
Quite apart from us currently needing to give more lower ranked women a leg up there is the ongoing issue that women's 25Ks are generally relatively a fair bit stronger than men's. The many more points available attract stronger fields and we have seen plenty examples of two qualifying round domestic 25Ks with our poor players getting routinely thumped by relatively well ranked foreign qualifying seeds. Often someone will come on and bemoan the list of results but they are usually very understandable.
Having nothing below 25Ks, which again in relative rankings quality are generlly somewhere in between men's 25Ks and challengers, is very poor.

I totally agree with this. The UK Pro league was great for internal competition during lockdown and a bit of a financial boost, but replacing some of these with 15Ks would give ranking points and at the end of the day that's what it's all about.

Madadman · Masters Series Champion

Id imagine that we will see some 15ks later in the season. I disagree about the UK pro league I feel that the tournaments that some on the mens side have managed lately are due to the UK pro league. Regularly getting use to playing a whole week of competitive tennis surely conditions the body to be use to it when it comes along in the ITFs.
Not to mention it also allows players to earn money and fund trips abroad without them being just given money and funded.

SuperT · Futures level

I don't disagree about the UK Pro League. I said it's been great - I just worry that it might be seen as an alternative to hosting 15Ks. I very much hope you are right and we will see some at some stage next year.

Lambda · Challenger level

Interesting change in womens wild cards next year. Women are limited to 3 main draw WCs in 15K and a further 3 in 25K to 100K. Next year, women will be eligible for an additional main draw WC if they win a match in any tournament they were playing in as a main draw wild card. They can receive up to 3 of these additional MDWCs in each of the 15K allocation and the 25K to 100K allocation.

With the increase in home tournaments, this could be useful for our ladies and an extra incentive to win where they are a MDWC.

Madadman · Masters Series Champion

Talking of changes to entries I noticed that challengers the Direct Acceptance has gone down from 23 to 21. Although likely 23 if SEs are cleared. There are now 6 qualifying places as that draw has extended from 16 to 24.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Lambda wrote:
Interesting change in womens wild cards next year. Women are limited to 3 main draw WCs in 15K and a further 3 in 25K to 100K. Next year, women will be eligible for an additional main draw WC if they win a match in any tournament they were playing in as a main draw wild card. They can receive up to 3 of these additional MDWCs in each of the 15K allocation and the 25K to 100K allocation.

With the increase in home tournaments, this could be useful for our ladies and an extra incentive to win where they are a MDWC.

Interesting......

You could argue this either way in terms of our women.

Great for Player X, say, who gets a wildcard to the first event, wins a round, and now can be given another wildcard later on.

But for Player Y, there's less chance of them being split and distributed around, so we'll get a higher concentration of wildcards in a few hands than before.

Of course, this depends on the favoured ones actually winning a round....

the addict · Tennis legend

Still only 4 W25 and 4 M25 (January and February) on the list for Britain - waiting to see if there will be any W15 and M15. So not many will benefit at the moment.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

the addict wrote:
Still only 4 W25 and 4 M25 (January and February) on the list for Britain - waiting to see if there will be any W15 and M15. So not many will benefit at the moment.

But this rule is for the whole of 2022, no?

So if we've already got 4 women's 25k events in Jan and Feb, we're bound to have more 25ks at some time in the year so that's going to be a big difference.

Madadman · Masters Series Champion

Coup Droit wrote:
the addict wrote:
Still only 4 W25 and 4 M25 (January and February) on the list for Britain - waiting to see if there will be any W15 and M15. So not many will benefit at the moment.
But this rule is for the whole of 2022, no?
So if we've already got 4 women's 25k events in Jan and Feb, we're bound to have more 25ks at some time in the year so that's going to be a big difference.

Think the LTA performance calendar published up to Wimbledon had another 2 in April and then another 2 in May. Slightly surprised no 15ks in the first half of the year.