I don't know whether the Satellites will be replaced with more Futures. But I do hope that that is the case. We could do with a few more Futures and I want to see one or two more on clay.
I think abolishing sats is a very good move. I've always thought that sats are unfair tpo the players the following year as they have to defend 4 weeks worth of accumulated points all in one go, often leading to massive ranking plunges [as with Colin Fleming this summer] which can be a big dent to the confidence of players.
I hope the LTA add more futures to replace the GB sats in 2007, that hasn't happened this year, there's been a big drop in the number of British tournaments. Last autumn there were 13 from the beginning of September to the end of November - 3 challengers, 6 futures and a sat. This year there are 8 - 2 challengers and 6 futures.
Spain have more than double the number of futures we have per year. I'd like there to be an extra clay-court one and I'd also like to see the grass-court futures in Oxford replaced during the first week of the French Open to give the Brits a warm-up before Surbiton and Queens qualies. Currently, we have 7 challengers a year. It'd be great to have 2 or 3 more [preferably in the London area ] or if not an indoor ATP event either in the first 4 months or after the US Open.
Cant really disagree in general although British players still do pretty well in comparison to most other countries for home tourneys, compare the number of Spanish players in top 500 with number we've got and you'll see why they have more events.
I would love to see an early spring indoor event, think the NIA in Birmingham would be an ideal venue but am still not convinced whether it would be a money maker.
Wouldn't you say though that the number of Spanish players in the top 500 is due to the number of events they've got from futures right up to ATPs ?
I reckon that an indoor ATP in Britain would generate quite a lot of money as long as it had the publicity. If the BBC gave full live coverage to it [like they used to with Battersea which always had lots of spectators] and the organisers could attract the top players like Federer and Nadal, I'm sure it'd be popular and would also remind the nation that the tennis season is longer than 2-3 weeks !
Another step in the right direction would be to get live terrestrial coverage [or maybe even just highlights] of ATP Nottingham which always tends to have a lot of GB success. Does anyone know how long Sky's deal for that lasts ?
I've heard that the BBC are going to bid for rights to show the US Open in 2007 as Sky's deal has ended [probably will be on interactive.]
Almost no chance of another Tour event in Britain at this moment.
De Villiers was asked but he didn't show any interest.
I agree about introducing more Challengers. And we need ones with greater prize money, it would be good to have a couple of 75Ks.
And Scotland should get a Challenger. This is really unfair, England has quite a few of them and Wales gets two.
I would love to see a Challenger on clay being played in Britain. Most of our boys would be in trouble, but it would be good for the future and the likes of Morgan Phillips would benefit from it.
@ De Villiers. What a git !!! We ought to petition him.
I thoroughly agree about getting more higher points challengers. Surbiton ought to be upgraded to at least 100K, maybe 125k, it's so strong. Manchester is also usually stronger than the average 50K, maybe that could be upgraded to 75K and then we could introduce some more 50Ks. That would be a much more productive way of spending the Wimbledon money, rather than hiring Peter Lundgren for the DC team, I mean we've already got Brad Gilbert and Lloydy [though how much coaching benefit he'll be, I'm not sure].
It would be good to have an indoor challenger in Scotland, they've got great facilities for one at Glasgow or Edinburgh. Maybe if they held it in November and made it a 100k, Andy Murray could be persuaded to enter which would certainly boost it's profile and Baker, Mackin and Dyce could get the other 3 wcs. Ireland also has one now with the Dublin 50k.
I'm not sure about a clay challenger in Britain. Baker and Morgan Phillips would benefit but it's just really going to be giving away ranking points and dosh to the huge crowd of Italians and Spanish who descend on these shores for the week. I think another clay futures would be better, maybe at Queenswood in Herts which has fantastic clay facilities and is just 30min away from where I live
I think a clay challenger still has to be a long term plan. But as you rightly say, if we had one next year we might as well just write a cheque to the spanish tennis association . It would probably still be the case for futures as well for a couple of years, but at least our players would have more exposure to clay and overall improvement can be tracked.
] or if not an indoor ATP event either in the first 4 months or after the US Open.
