Plans to reintroduce a ladies’s event at The Queen’s Membership relaxation on convincing the ATP Tour the grass courts will stay in adequate situation for the lads’s occasion the next week.
The LTA and the All England Membership need to stage a WTA event at Queen’s within the first week of the grass court docket season from 2025.
If the ATP might be persuaded then the highest ladies’s gamers could be gracing the courts of the west London membership for the primary time since 1973.
“We’ve acquired excessive confidence, and we now have acquired vital proof from the All England Membership as to how grass courts put on over a two-week interval,” the LTA chief government Scott Lloyd mentioned.
“The grass courts at Queen’s are completely able to delivering two weeks {of professional} stage tennis. We have the information.
“We expect it might be nice for that swing of tournaments and for the ladies’s occasions, significantly from a visibility and profile perspective.”
The LTA says it has studied climate situations, the density of the soil and potential put on to areas of the court docket, such because the baseline.
However male gamers are understood to be sad in regards to the prospect of beginning their week on used courts.
“The ATP are essential companions of ours and we’re working with them to attempt to make sure that the gamers are glad and comfy that the floor can maintain use,” he continued.
“Sometimes gamers are fairly delighted to make it to the second week of Wimbledon and you do not hear them argue an excessive amount of in regards to the court docket floor in that state of affairs. We’re very hopeful that there will not be any points, however we’re working by way of the logistics.”
Logistics embody the supply of courts for males who arrive early to practise and the impression on the ATP qualifying occasion which is held the weekend beforehand.
The ATP has been open to the concept of extra mixed occasions in recent times however should steadiness that with the needs of its members. Whether or not it has the authorized cowl to dam the LTA’s plans stays to be seen.
A ladies’s occasion at Queen’s would exchange Eastbourne as the only WTA 500 occasion staged within the UK within the run-up to Wimbledon.
Eastbourne would nonetheless host a mixed occasion however, as soon as the WTA occasion is downgraded to 250 standing, there will likely be better restrictions on who can enter.
As a WTA 500 occasion is staged in Germany in the identical week, no top-10 participant could be allowed to enter Eastbourne – except they’re British, or the defending champion.
Not more than three top-30 gamers could be permitted in complete, and this at an occasion which in 2023 performed host to half of the world’s prime 10.
“Eastbourne sells out and we have loved it over a really, very lengthy time frame as a serious event venue, however the actuality of that location is that it’s commercially restricted to some extent,” mentioned Lloyd.
“We simply assume that having a WTA 500 in week one, straight after Roland Garros, will elevate the profile of top-level tennis in that interval.
“It is not about trying to focus our tournaments in London. We’ll nonetheless completely assist our different venues all through that calendar, and certainly as you see us doing with Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup – whether or not that is Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry. We need to have that geographical variety.”
There isn’t a scope for an additional WTA grass-court occasion within the UK, and, because the LTA now owns the Nottingham Tennis Centre, it’s the event in Birmingham which is prone to make approach for Queen’s.
The Edgbaston Priory Membership first staged a WTA occasion in 1982, when Billie Jean King gained the title.
These discussions are happening as the game investigates the viability of a ‘Premium Tour’, which may create a sequence of extra unique tournaments. However as that could be a good distance from turning into actuality, different concepts proceed to be superior.
