WTA, ATP grit for survival
WTA and ATP global calendar events with their ranked players make the flagships of modern tennis. Their influence prevails in maintaining the global popularity of the game. The prize money and ranking incentives are strong attractions to the best of global sporting talents. Keeping tennis attractive has been the responsibility of WTA and ATP, year in and year out, since their inception. Covid-19 scenario has been very tough on them. They are shaken, but holding out impressively.
I would say tennis is somewhat managing its survival well in the present situation. Mega tennis events and infrastructures evolved over the last 150 years. Many such venues are sporting institutions of advanced nations. Along with these new event venues have come to being in the past decades providing spectator with inspiring sporting experience and players with state of the art playing arenas. These are helping tennis. The add-on to this popularity is the electronic media platforms for global real time tennis viewing experience. Amazingly, some events achieve billon viewers in live broadcast.
European clay courts
This is where the action is now. These European events will lead to the second Grand Slam of the year, the clay court championships of France, the French Open title in Paris. Clay court season began in Monty Carlo and went to Barcelona. Madrid is on now and Rome would follow before Paris. Some of these are their national championships.
Virus restrictions have created empty grand stands, long list of elite player absenteeism, restricted draw sheets and much smaller pay cheque to players; irksome to management and players.
Nadal prevails in Barcelona
Barcelona final, which Nadal won, was a three hours plus thriller. Nadal went to say that he has never played a final like it in Barcelona. His opponent, the ever-rising young Greek Stefanos Tsiitsipas had a good few match points but missed out to convert. The final rounds of clay court events are thrilling to watch. However, long list of absenteeism is telling on the quality of tennis in the round of 32 and 64. On the slow red clay court, tactical display of the game evolves in slower progression in each rally. It is an appealing audience attraction.
WTA players
Former French Open winner Iga Swiatek of Poland looked impressive in Madrid. Australia’s Ashleigh Barty and Romania’s Simona Halep are also French Open winners. All of them are playing in Europe. There are many good WTA clay court players from Europe and Baltic states in the top 30 of the WTA world ranking. In fact, women’s draw has not suffered too much with absenteeism in the European season of the tour.
Diluted South Asian tennis
Many Asian countries took the International Tennis Federation affiliation in the first half of the twentieth century. It was a good move to these countries to propagate tennis. Sri Lanka took it in 1915. At that time, there was only amateur tennis. Under the British Raj, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and a good few nations got valuable lead to establish necessary managerial and infrastructure to promote tennis. Recreational and competitions thrived in the first fifty years of ITF affiliation. There was only one tennis then.
Subsequently ITF lost its global position as the sole controllers and promoters of tennis to ATP and WTA in the 1970’s. To survive ITF went away from single-minded promotion of tennis to distractive and diluted modified tennis. These modified and tailored forms of ITF tennis are turning out to be the need of external entities, such as equipment manufacture, clothing industry and easy access to coaching certifications without a competition tennis career. Tennis from being a noun has become a decorative and deceiving adjective.
The ITF dilution is keeping the local Open Tennis standard low in many countries. These have distracted or eliminated the focus we had on Open Tennis. Today the entire early and middle development requirements of global tennis are been overridden to the point of disappearance. Many ITF national associations are ill manned for Open Tennis.
Many of the South Asian countries do not have the playing facilities for Open Tennis requirement for match play practice, which induces maturity to reach the ATP and WTA Tennis standard.
Use of limited tennis
resources
ITF at present have under their umbrella mini tennis, wheelchair tennis, red ball tennis, green ball tennis, para tennis, blind tennis and far too many transient age group tennis. These have taken away not only the focus a nation had on Open Tennis but also depriving the resources of Open Tennis.
ITF had none of these in their existence from 1915 to 1980. Asian countries do not have the managerial capacity, resources and infrastructure requirement to accommodate these many ITF distractions. Today none of the players from south Asian belt is in the global top 50 of the professional ranking. ATP and WTA demands undiluted national platform to achieve merit in their events. Here, we have something to ponder on for the future of tennis.
In short, ITF affiliation is not a requirement now for promoting tennis. Many European countries are not with ITF. In fact, ATP and WTA have their calendar of events open to all who are good. ITF is unknown in USA and in Europe they are doing very well.
—George Paldano, former international player; Accredited Coach of German Tennis Federation; National coach Brunei and Sri Lanka, coached ATP, WTA and ITF top 200 ranked players, Davis-Cup, Federation-Cup coach. — geodano2015@gmail.com