The WTA Summer Calendar Will Be Juggled A Bit

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 16th September 2013

The WTA Summer Calendar Will Be Juggled A Bit

epa03552922 Sloane Stephens of the US awaits the serve of her opponent during her semi final match against Victoria Azarenka of Belarus at the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 24 January 2013. EPA/Barbara Walton |

The WTA tournament at Stanford will move into Carlsbad week, beginning on July 28 and will butt up against the Canadian Open, but next year there will be three weeks in between Wimbledon and Stanford without a WTA event in the United States.

Wimbledon will move back a week in 2015 and take over one of those weeks.

On the schedule, the US Open Series for the women will begin just a month before the US Open with Stanford, the Canadian Open, Cincinnati and New Haven.

The fate of the New Haven tournament is now undetermined: the USTA, which owns the event recently tried to move it to Winston-Salem, where it would be a combined tournament with the ATP-250 men’s event there. However, the ATP Board of Directors turned down the request, at least partially because the tournament would not boost the men’s prize money to match the women’s. The New Haven WTA sanction is higher-level one than the men’s. Another reason the men’s were have said to have turned down the request is they were not guaranteed more time slots on center court.

New Haven organizers are trying to re-sign current sponsors, add new sponsors and do anything they can to keep the event in the city. Paid tickets sales were have said to have risen this year, but the event didn’t come close to selling out.

For now, the New Haven tournament will stay on the 2014 WTA calendar in the same week until the USTA makes a final decision as to what to do with it. The USTA does plan on keeping the tournament in the United States.

California has lost five tournaments in the past five years, including the WTA Championships, which was played in Los Angeles from 2002-2005. Stanford and the combined Masters Series tournament, Indian Wells, are the only two left in the state, which is considered by some to be the engine of the US economy.

The state has a Gross State Product (GSP) of around $2 trillion dollars, somewhere between 13-14% of the United States Gross Domestic product, and measured by itself, California is said to have the sixth largest economy in the world. It is also home to 13 of the nation’s top 100 publicly traded companies, so some tennis officials are concerned that the sport is losing in a critical market.

Sadly, one source told Daily Tennis that there was no serious interest from anywhere in the United States to buy the Carlsbad sanction.

The ATP tournament in Atlanta is also said to be studying its future, and the men’s tournament in Memphis, which is owned by the same group that sold San Jose tournament, may not be long for that city either.

Topics: 10sballs, Tennis, Wta