Newport Stays On Calendar After Wimbledon, WTA Looking For New Grass Events

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 2nd April 2013

Newport Stays On Calendar After Wimbledon, WTA Looking For New Grass Events |

Newport has decided not to follow the lead of Stuttgart and become a Wimbledon warm-up event in 2015. The only US grass court tournament has decided to continue to be played after Wimbledon in July because the only warm-up week available to that would have been the week after Roland Garros in early June when children in the US are still getting out of school and many families don’t vacation then. Plus the June weather is more unpredictable.

Newport, which is home of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, also annually hosts the Hall induction ceremonies and it might have been more difficult to get people in the tennis industry to come to the event in between Roland Garros and Wimbledon.

It appears that there will be room for one more grass court tournament on the ATP schedule now that the warm-up season will be extended to three weeks.

Stuttgart appears to be scheduled as the only grass court tournament that will be played the week following Roland Garros. It will likely be followed by Queen’s and Halle the second week, then the ATP-WTA combined events in Eastbourne and ‘s-Hertogenbosch the third week.

The WTA has yet to publish its 2015 calendar, but it will also now have an open grass court week after Roland Garros. As it stands today, the WTA has grass court warm-up events in Birmingham and Nuremberg, Germany (a new event that takes over for Barcelona) followed by the combined events in Eastbourne and ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Daily Tennis has learned that the WTA is in the process of conducting a RFP for more grass court events.