The State of the Game Part V The Rest of the Seasons of the Year

Written by: Tennischiro on 2nd March 2012

The State of the Game Part V The Rest of the Seasons of the Year |

Season III. It’s time to return to the little tutorial about the “Tennis Seasons” that I started in Part I of this little series. We got through the first 14 weeks of the year with the 6 weeks of the Aussie Season and 8 weeks of the Season 2. Season 3 starts the spring clay court season with events in Casablanca and Houston and ramps right up to a Masters 1000 in Monte Carlo the third week of April. It moves to two weeks of ATP250s mixed with an ATP500 in Barcelona. Then it ramps right up again with consecutive ATP1000s in Madrid and Rome.Then comes a gasp to recover with ATP250s in Dusseldorf (The World Team Cup) and Nice before the French Open from May 25 to June 27. That’s 9 weeks. Last year Nadal got 4700 points in this stretch. At the same time, Djokovic ran his winning streak through to the Roland Garros semis after taking a break and missing Monte Carlo; he picked up 2970 points as he won an ATP250 in Belgrade as well as Madrid and Rome. Let’s say the mathematical maximum would have been if he had won Monte Carlo and Roland Garros as well for a total of 5250 points. Nole may very well go for a clean sweep of the clay Masters1000s this year. He has indicated he wants to play Monte Carlo. In any case, let’s call the nominal maximum 5000 points. That makes this a pretty rich 9 week season.

Season IV: The Grass Courts. The next season gets under way even before Season III is over. During the second week of the French there are small grass events at a level below ATP250s like the Nottingham Challenger. There are only 2 weeks from Roland Garros to Wimbledon and players want time on the grass so you will see some of the strongest field’s of the year for little challenger events on grass at this time of the year. Most of the top players will pick up at least one of the four ATP250s during those 2 weeks. Players who enjoy Serving-and-Volleying are likely to play two of those events plus Wimbledon and the Newport ATP250 the week after Wimbledon. Normally, that would be the end of the “Grass”. But this year, 3 weeks after the All England Championships at Wimbledon, there will be another tournament on grass, again at Wimbledon: the Olympics. So schedules for the next four weeks after Wimbledon are going to be screwy as players try to gear up for their best possible result in the London Games. The Beijing Olympic championship earned Rafael Nadal 800 points. I’m not sure what the points value is this year, but it is significant. But players are not playing there for the points. They want to be part of the Olympics and perhaps earn a medal. Nicolas Massu only won a little over $4,000,000 in his 15 year pro career including just 6 singles titles and 1 doubles titles, and all but 2 of those events were on clay. But the 1 hard court event that he did in which he did win both the singles and doubles titles was the 2004 Athens Olympics. And he was the first man to have done that in 80 years! What do Nole, Rafa, Roger want most this year? Yes, that little shining medal. And they aren’t the only ones.

So, in normal years, the Grass Season is 4, maybe 5 weeks and is worth about 2250 points (no reigning Wimbledon champions have played Newport in a very long time). There is usually a round of Davis Cup at this time, but this year they played it earlier. However, we have to consider the Olympic games as an asterisked part of the Grass Season. So this year it could be worth 3000 points (if you are one of the top 4 and pulls off the Wimbledon-Olympics double),

Season V: The North American Hardcourts. The normal season following Wimbledon, Season V, would run 10 weeks from July 9 to September 16 and include 2 weeks of Davis Cup. This year, there is just one weekend of Davis Cup and the Olympics runs over 9 days from July 28 to August 5. In July the North American hardcourt summer season gets underway a week after Newport in Atlanta and continues on in Los Angeles before the ATP 1000s in Toronto and Cincinnati. Washington, D.C. is concurrent with the Olympics, just before Toronto. There is one more ATP250 in Winston-Salem the week before the US Open. At the same time the dirt ballers are avoiding the hard courts as long as they can playing various European national championships in places like Bastad, Hamburg, Gstaad, Kitzbuhl, Umag and Stuttgart. Hamburg and Washington, D.C. are the only ATP500s in this season. Players in the top 30 need to commit to 4 of the ATP500s through the year. They can cound the Olympics as one of those. It’s been rare that anyone has won the Canadian Open, Cincinnati and the US Open, but it would be possible. With the focus on the Olympics this year, it is even less likely, but you could say there are 4000 possible points in Season V, even without the points for the Olympics. In 2007, Federer nearly pulled that triple off winning Cincy and the US Open, but falling short in the finals on the Canadian. When Del Potro won the US Open in 2009, he won Washington, D.C. and LA as well in addition to reaching the finals of the Canadian. There used to be more prestige and participation in the tournaments in Washington, D.C. and Indianapolis (now defunct). In any case, it is a tough season with the heat and humidity and the top players are more concerned with arriving in NY fresh for the fortnight in the maelstrom that is Flushing Meadows. It’s a long, tough leg of the odyssey that is the ATP World Tour.

Season VIa: The Far East. Right after the US Open, the players scatter. Some will have Davis Cup matches immediately after NY, but most take a week off. Season VIa is just 4 weeks: after simultaneous ATP250s in Metz and St.Petersburg, Russia the tour moves to the Far East, culminating in two simultaneous ATP500s in Beijing and Tokyo followed by a Masters1000 in Shanghai. If you want to make the full Asian swing, you play the ATP250 in Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur the week before that. In any case, the 500/1000 combination and the lure of the Far East gets most of the players to make the trip halfway around the world. Last year, Andy Murray ran the table in Asia winning Bangkok, Tokyo and Shanghai for 1750 points. He looked like ready to make a serious challenge in the ATP Finals, but he ended up being the victim of niggling injuries that kept him from fulfilling the promise of that miraculous run in Asia.

Season VIb: Europe Indoors (mostly). At this point the weary players have to schlep it back to Europe as soon as they lose in Shanghai to be back to play the next week in an ATP250 in Vienna, Stockholm or Moscow, all indoors. The next week it’s two concurrent ATP500s: Basel indoors or Valencia on outdoor hard. Then comes the final Masters1000 in Paris. This is the last large draw event of the year. Only 8 will qualify for the ATP Tour Finals in London. The long travel requirements to the Far East and the tough summer season have usually taken their toll by this time and a lot of players are nursing various injuries, just trying to make it to the end of the year and a little rest to recover for another season. And a few are trying to stake their claim to a spot in the finals. Federer picked up 1500 points in this stretch last year streaking into the ATP Tour finals on a 12 match win streak that started with Davis Cup right after his devastating loss in the semis of the US Open to Djokovic. You need to understand Davis Cup is counted as one tournament for all the matches played in up to 4 ties throughout the year. Nadal got 320 points instead of one of his ATP 500 events for his Davis Cup 6-0 record last year.

In any case, if you put together VIa and VIb, you have 8 weeks that are worth a little over 3000 points if someone runs the table, but no one ever has. By this time of the year, the top guys inevitably falter in one section or the other. It is simply to much to ask of the body at the end of a long year. Reasonably, no one gets out of these two miniseasons with more than 2000 points. It’s possible, but I don’t know that anyone has done it. Nalbandian had a tremendous year end in 2007 winning Masters1000s in Madrid and Paris, but that didn’t include the trip to the Far East.

Season VII: ATP & Davis Cup Finals. In most years, there is a week hiatus or at least 6 days before they start the ATP Tour Finals. But with the press of the Olympics and desire to shorten the schedule, they have moved up the start of the ATP World Tour Finals 6 days. Last year, you got to see Federer play Tsonga on three successive Sundays: in the finals of Paris, in the first match of the Tour Finals Round Robin play and in the final match of the ATP World Tour Finals. This year, if that happened, the first two of those matches would end up taking place one day apart on Sunday in Paris and then Monday in London. They’ve pushed the Finals back one day to Monday, but they are compressing a lot of action into just a few days. Then the Davis Cup finals takes place 4 days later, beginning the Friday of the week the ATP World Tour Finals are played on Monday. That could be significant for Djokovic. It gives him a little extra added goal for a perfect year. Run the table, win the majors, win the Olympics, win the World Tour Finals and Davis Cup. Mathematically, it’s possible. But for a human from this planet, …I don’t think so. In any case, season VII is worth another 1500 points maximum plus the Davis Cup points if they are counted.

Season VIII – The Exos. There is one more season. Davis Cup ends November 18 and the best players in the world have just 6 weeks to rest, recover, rehab and retool for the 2013 season and start the whole season all over again. If you are not involved in the year end championships or Davis Cup finals, you have a little more than 8 weeks (one more week than this year). How you use this time is very important to your success in the next year. There are a lot of temptations for the top players to play too many exos. It’s really important to take enough time to let your injuries heal up and rest the body and mind so that you can be fresh in the new year. Players need good advisors to help them navigate this part of the year and build a schedule that maximizes their longevity as well as their income while preparing them to play their best tennis. Tennis is a physically demanding sport and yet it has one of the shortest off seasons. There really isn’t enough time to rest and recover, make any technical changes in your game and still put in at least 3 hard weeks of training to be ready for the grind and heat in Australia. As a result, we see more and more injuries inspite of the fact there is more attention paid to taking care of these athletes then ever before. This is one reason the tremendous run that Federer has maintained at 30 years of age is even more amazing. He has worked very hard to make it all look so easy. In reality, they all have, but Fed just makes it look easier than anyone else!

Here’s a little summary

Season I – Australian Open – 1/1 to 2/12/12 -2300 max
Season II – Indian Wells/Miami – 2/13 to 4/8/12 – 3000 max
Season III – Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome/French Open – 4/9 to 6/10/12 – 5000
Season IV – The Grass/Wimbledon – 6/11 to 7/8/12* – 3000 max
Season V – N. American Hard/US Open – 7/9 to 9/16/12 – 4000 max
Season VIa – The Far East/Shanghai – 9/17 to 10/14/12 – 1750 max
Season VIb – European Indoors/Paris – 10/15 to 11/4/12 – 1500 max
Season VII – ATP Finals & Davis Cup – 11/5 to 11/18/12 – 1800 max**
Season VIII – Rest, Recover, Retool – 11/19 to 12/30/12
* – confused by Olympics on grass this year
** – Davis Cup points could contribute 300 to year end total

10sChiro

to see Parts I, II, III and IV of “The State of the Game” and other articles by 10sChiro, go to

https://archive.10sballs.com/author/don/

Topics: Tennis Seasons