The ATP Tour announces that it will reduce its calendar by two weeks beginning in 2012, eliminating the week in between the Masters Series Bercy/Paris and the ATP World Finals in London, and moving the fall tournaments in Montpellier, Bucharest, Vienna and St. Petersburg to earlier in the year.
Of those four events in the ATP's provisional 2012 calendar, St. Petersburg and Vienna are slated for the week of September 16 and the week of October 14, respectively, while Montepellier (Feb 4) & Bucharest (April 22) have been moved way bacMontpellier has been moved way back to the week of February 4 and Bucharest will now be a spring event played the week of April 22.
As a result of the reduction, those eight men who qualify for the ATP World Finals will have no time off between Bercy and London. The 2012 ATP World Tour Finals will start around November 4.
Tournament directors of the ATP's smaller, 250-level tournaments at least won a small victory in the process as they did not see any cuts to their events.
“The length of the off-season is arguably the biggest issue confronting the sport of tennis, and it was the responsibility of the ATP to find a way to address the problem,” said ATP CEO Adam Helfant said. “I’m pleased to say there was broad consensus among our members that the players, and the sport as a whole, needed a longer off-season, and that both the player and the tournament representatives on the ATP Board found a way to come together and make meaningful progress for the sport.”
Helfant also said that the board did not vote to force the players to sign agreements that they would not play exhibitions in the off-season.
"They currently have the ability to play special events, charity events, practice matches in their off-season. There are certain times that they're not under our current rules, and we've not changed our rules," he said.
A number of tournament directors had asked that players ranked in the top 30 not be allowed to play exhibitions in the off-season if the board was to vote to cut events, as some believe that the players shouldn't be complaining about being physically taxed by along season and then go out and play big money exhibitions.
That riled players such as players such as Andy Roddick, who responding to a previously published Tennis.com report wrote on Twitter:
“It's not their decision to make. If a guy wants to wear himself down then it's his risk. They can’t have regulations and requirements all year and then run our off-season as well. My foundation has raised 15 million and would take serious hit… The tournament directors are our bosses? All I'm saying is that we are professionals and its our decision to make." —Matthew Cronin