ATP makes date to resolve calendar issue
Neil Harman Tennis Correspondent
October 17 2010 2:16PM
The Net Post
Walking through the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria during the US Open last month, the Net Post bumped into Mark Miles, a long-time CEO of the ATP Tour, chairman of Indianapolis’ successful bid to host the Super Bowl in 2012 and who is now being touted as a potential Republican candidate for the city’s mayor.
One asked how he was keeping and his immediate response was, “It’s nice to wake up every day and not have to worry about the tennis calendar.” But if Miles can persuade the NFL to decide that Indianapolis – “a cold-weather city”, as he described it – could stage this jamboree in early February, surely he could have solved the small matter of a few tennis tournaments kicking up a stink. But he could not.
Since Miles’s departure from the post five years ago, that responsibility fell first to Etienne de Villiers and has now become the raisin d’etre of Adam Helfant, the present chief executive. It is – as they would readily tell you - the trickiest of businesses.
For a start, the ATP’s two constituents are the tournaments and the players, which is a conflict about as entrenched as that of North and South Korea. Miles was able, in his period as chief executive, to straddle the demilitarised zone with excellent strategic balance, neither coming down on one side, nor the other. For the tournaments each want their fair share of the best players and do not want to budge an inch from their present position in the year; the players want to pick and choose more where and when they can play to be at their best for more of the time.
It has been the demand to resolve these two implacable positions that has driven many a tennis administrator to sleepless nights. Now for the latest attempt to settle the issue, which will be debated long and hard over the cocoa in the next couple of weeks in London as the ATP’s board meets with several calendar options on the table.
The Net Post has learnt that there are three prospective calendars for 2012, with eight alternatives for the year after. The players – and the ATP represents more than 1,000 - are being asked to decide which of the choices they prefer and let their representatives know. It could lead to some interesting answers.
Rafael Nadal had his say this week, an eloquent appraisal in a foreign tongue which looked to spread the opportunities for every level of player, not just those in his neck of the ranking woods. We touched on it briefly in The Times but Nadal’s words deserve repeated exposure.
“If I am Adam Helfant, I think the situation is impossible, no?” he said. “He knows the season is too long and for other players [rather than the top ones] they prefer to play during all the season because they have more chances to keep playing and earning money.
“The ATP is not just the top ten. There are a lot of important players on the tour. I always say for me the perfect schedule is if you have the chance to play and the chance not to play. I have said many times on the [Players’] Council that after the US Open, I can play here in Asia for two or three weeks maximum, you play the Masters [Barclays ATP World Tour Finals] and that’s it for the season.
“You can keep having tournaments if you want until December 31, but not 1000 or 500 [ranking point] tournaments because they make too much difference on the points and on the ranking. If you want to be in the top, you have to play. But if you have the chance to choose, if you were not playing well, if you have been injured, if you didn’t play a lot of matches and you wanted to play for the rest of the season 250-point tournaments, you could play. If you want to stop, you can stop. Everybody can be happy.”
The Net Post understands that two of the three 2012 alternatives lengthen the off-season by a couple of weeks. That is a good start. Nadal may well want a strong say in the differences being considered for the following year when the impact is largely going to be felt in the spring clay-court season, where he accumulates so many of his points.
One suggestion talks of a three-week long off-season and a clay-court season of seven weeks in which the greatest strategic difference would be Barcelona and Bucharest being played in the same week; the same is true of Estoril, Munich and Belgrade; with Nice, Zagreb and Dusseldorf (the World Team Cup) all being played in the week before the French Open. In the “six-week” clay season, Estoril, Houston and Casablanca would be in the same week; similarly Barcelona and Munich; and then, in the week preceding Roland Garros, all of Nice, Belgrade and Dusseldorf.
In the prospective calendar that gives a three-week longer season, tournaments that had been held previously in the autumn, such as Stockholm, Vienna and St Petersburg, are being considered for a move into February, a couple of weeks after the Australian Open. One of these three would be scheduled alongside Zagreb and Costa do Sauipe in Brazil.
There is also a consideration being given to the Beijing and Tokyo events – which were staged the week before Shanghai this year – being shifted to the week after which, on the face of it, is odd given that the lesser-rated tournaments should be building-up to a Masters 1000 rather than trail behind it, with the consequent likelihood of weaker fields. All of this is on the negotiating table of course.
By the time we reach the O2 arena and the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, we should have an idea which of the preferences is being worked out with greater earnestness and where the sport is heading.
Could the sport actually get to the stage where everyone agrees to do something for the general good or is it a case as Nadal said before he left Shanghai last week “Maybe that’s just dreaming.”
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