!Scott By Pete Bodo
Hey, everyone. I'm just hanging fire here, half-watching the warm up to tonight's tantalizing quarterfinal clash between Venus and Serena Williams - the men's quartefinal pitting Andy Murray against Juan Martin del Potro, two men who had an interesting, um, interaction in Rome earlier this year.
BTW, Andrew Friedman (better known to some of you by his screen name, Rolo Tomassi) will cover that match and his story will be posted at the Tennis.com home page later. Meanwhile, Larry Scott and the WTA this morning rolled out its finalized Roadmap 2009 - getting this significant overhaul of the WTA Tour finished one year ahead of schedule. I think the best way to handle this, all things considered, is for me to cherry-pick the most salient elements in WTA CEO Larry Scott's Magna Carta and add comments of my own, if appropriate. So here we go. Please note that I've done some cutting-and-pasting of Scott's words, but I think the context has been preserved.
Scott: First in terms of a healthier calendar, we've long coveted a longer off season, and we'll have that next year with the end of year Championships ending at the end of October. We'll be up to a nine-week off season for the players, which is two more weeks than what we have today. We're going to reduce the amount players are required to play by the tour. Traditionally they're required to play 13 tournaments on top of the Grand Slams. That number will be down to 10 tournaments next year. . . There will be a limitation on how many smaller tournaments the top 10 players can play, because we want them playing on the biggest stages.
--- Sounds good so far. . .
Scott: Secondly, we are reformatting the calendar in a way that we think will be more compelling to fans, and to our media partners that follow the sport, by streamlining the top number of tournaments from 26 Tier 1 and Tier 2 tournaments we have today down to 20, what we're calling Premier Level Tournaments.
The anchors of these 20 premier tournaments will be four mandatory combined equal prize money tournaments, in Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, and Beijing. Those will be $4.5 million in prize money, which is an unprecedented level of prize money for our players.To put that in perspective, our single highest prize money tournament in 2007 was the Miami tournament at $3.7 million in prize money. The next highest was Indian Wells at $2.1 million in prize money. So all four of those tournaments going up to $4.5 million in prize money. A significant increase there, which is really sort of proving the proposition that when the best men and best women play together on the biggest stages, there is untapped value for the sport.
Prize money on the tour is going up substantially from a little bit over $71 million this year to over $85 million next year. To put that in perspective from 2006 to 2009, that will represent a 40% prize money increase for the players.
--- I'd be interested to see how the ATP tour's prize-money statistics match up with these. This jump in prize money is substantial and signficant. A cynic might say that much of it is derived from the growing partnership with the ATP in events like the new mandatory premium events, but that isn't necessarily th case, and it hardly matters. The bottom line is that this is a noteworthy increase over a period of time when the WTA has been buffetted by controversy and winds of change.
Scott: Aside from those four premier mandatory tournaments, we have 15 other premier tournaments, and then 30 international tournaments on the tour. So in total, we still will have 55 tournaments. A very similar number (to now), but we've had to streamline a little bit to end the season a little bit earlier. Another new feature of the calendar is in addition to the end of year Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha, we'll have the first ever year end Championships for our international level tournaments. We felt that it's important that those international tournaments lead towards something as well, so you'll see a tournament in Bali, Indonesia (at the end of the calendar), and that will be for the top 12 ranked winners of international tournaments during the year.
It won't be the same players that are playing in Doha. If you play in Doha, that's your end of year season Championship. But if you didn't qualify for Doha and you won one of those international tournaments during the year, we'll hopefully see those players in Bali.
--- I'm all fired up about this year-end championships for the also-rans. But it also reminds of something the international soccer establishment would come up with: the Northern Loire Valley's Cup runner-ups Cup! I love the potential here. Imagine the Flavia Penettas, Nadia Petrovas and Shahar Peers of this world getting a shot at winning a year-end anything, safe in the knowledge that there isn't going to be a Serena or Maria or Jelena around to rain on the parade. This tournament has shoot-out written all over it!
Scott: Tying all this together will be a revised ranking system. Some significant changes to the ranking system with a shift more toward quality and toward players' results in the premium level events.What I mean is that the ranking will consist of results from the four Grand Slam tournaments, from the four premier mandatory tournaments, two of the next level of premier tournaments, and then a player's best five or six other results.
So the rankings will consist of 16 results on a player's ranking, down from 17 today. But the player's ranking will be made up more significantly by their results at these biggest tournaments that they have to play.
So if players don't play the big events, there will be zero pointers. The results will not be able to be dropped or replaced by smaller tournaments. So it's a bit of a shift towards the big events in terms of what's going to make up the player's ranking while still trying to balance rewarding those players that are supporting the system more than others.
--- Emphasizing the most important events is a great idea, although I would still like to see a signficant difference between the majors and the premium mandatory events. This is less because of pure "tradition" than a reality that many people overlook. The ITF and the respective national associations that promote the majors provide most of the cash for so many of the great programs that have enabled tennis to become a more accessible, popular sport. Without a strong ITF, meaning strong majors, the grass roots will simply shrivel up and die. Let's face it, the WTA and ATP have neither the ability nor mandate to do the gruntwork in the trenches of the recreational and junior game. Beyond that, I would prefer the rankings to be based on 14 rather than 16 events, but again - a significant improvement.
Scott: When you look at our 2009 calendar, there are some important things that stand out, in my opinion. First is that we're up to a record number of tournaments that are combined or back to back with the ATP. 46% of the tournaments on our tour next year are aligned with the ATP, either back to back or combined, including the top 13 events in tennis are now going to be combined or aligned.
--- This is welcome as well, although I don't believe that back to back events have anything like the appeal of combined events. I guess that the problem posed by combined events is that they knock one additional week of play off the calendar for both ATP and WTA (because the committment would have to be to two-weeks, or at least 10 days). On the other hand, players who go out in week 1 of a combined could potentially play in an event the following week, but what promoter would want to risk having a tournament featuring mostly lower-ranked players?
We'll also see equal prize money at a record number of tournaments next year. We're up to 10 tournaments that will have equal prize money. It was only two short years ago that there were only two tournaments in the world that paid equal prize money: The US Open and the Australian Open.
--- This is certainly good news for fans who support the idea of equal prize money.
Scott: There are a few firsts in tennis, new innovation and I think some ground-breaking developments I want to draw your attention to. First, revenue sharing. I think women's tennis will become the first sport, the first individual sport ever, to have a revenue sharing agreement between our tournament promoters on the one hand and the players on another hand.
What this means, is that our prize money minimums are set for 2009 and 2010. But come 2011, any prize money increases will be determined based on the financial performance of the tournaments. So for the first time we're going to have outside auditors that are going to go in and audit the books of the tournaments, and we're going to have a much deeper knowledge than we've ever had before about how the business of running our tournaments has gone.
So this is something that took an awfully long time to develop, but I'm really thrilled we'll get out of the sort of random prize money negotiations between our players and tournaments, and finally have a formula that ties together the economic interests of our players and tournaments.
--- I welcome this degree of accountability; this certainly is a new, novel approach to the business of pro tennis. What a great idea! Bottom line: tennis is a performance-based sport, right down to the way the competitors are compensated (round-by-round), so it seems to me that a comprehensive performance-based financial structure is not only appropriate, but critical to promoting a reality-based game.It will also give top players greater incentive to support the tour if their prize-money payouts are linked to the success of any given event. Elsewhere in the transcript, Scott said that in any event the prize-money will not drop below a certain level. It would be good to know just what that level is, and whether it's punitive enough to make a difference.
Scott: What the players are really committing to and sacrificing as part of this new Roadmap, is the stronger accountability and tougher penalties. We'll have suspensions for the first time ever in tennis next year.
For those players that are committed to the top four premier mandatory and our next five premier tournaments in Dubai, Rome, Canada, Cincinnati, and Tokyo. If they don't meet one of their commitments, they'll have an opportunity to sort of make up that commitment by showing up to the tournament or going to the tournament market the week of that tournament, or another time during the year, to show their commitment to that event to mitigate the fact that they couldn't play. But if they don't do that, then they'll be subject to a suspension the following year.
On suspensions, the way that will work is if a player misses one of these nine tournaments that they're committed to, they will either be allowed to attend the tournament that week (if they're capable of doing so) to, you know, do a day of media and those things that will help the tournament to show that they were committed to the tournament.
If they can't, they'll be given some other opportunities during the year to make an in market appearance and promote the tournament for the following year. If they don't do that, then they will be suspended for up to two premier tournaments after that tournament the following year.
(And on Venus and Serena Williams) and Indian Wells, first of all, the suspension rule is only in effect for players in the top 10. So assuming Venus and Serena are in the top 10, which is looking good for 2009 at this point in time, they will both be signed up and expected to play at Indian Wells. They both said they're not planning on playing Indian Wells, so they will be subject to the same rules as every other player, which means that to avoid suspension they will have to be available to do in market appearances, promotional activities as designated by the tour in consultation with the tournament, either during the week of the tournament or at three other possible times during the year that we will designate.
So the rule will apply to them vis a vis Indian Wells the same way it would apply to any other top 10 player
--- This entire area is very tricky, IMO, but the outstanding positive feature is that no-shows at the mandatory premier events will get zero-pointers on their ranking record. It's a pity that the Williamses and Indian Wells can't just move on, but the reality is that they cannot. I wonder how the suspension rules would have been written if the tour didn't have to work around this unfortunate situation. Beyond that, I wonder if it wouldn't be better if the tour allowed each player one exemption from the mandatory premiers in some form that doesn't allow the player to make up the points elsewhere (thereby minimizing the disadvantage of actually taking advantage of the exemption). One of the potential shortcomings of this approach is a player prone to or struggling with injury will be at a serious disadvantage, and so will a player who feels that she can only perform at her best if she plays relatively few tournaments (10? 12?). But that problem probably is insoluble.You know what they way: the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Scott: And the last sort of first or innovation I want to talk about is about the much discussed on court coaching. We've been through a very extensive period of testing and consultation, both internally and externally, and our board made the decision here, with the support of our player council, that we are going forward and approving and implementing on court coaching at all tournaments starting next year.
It will continue to be voluntary for any player that chooses to do it. No one's forced to have their coach come out on the court, but they'll be entitled to once per set, or if their opponent ever takes a medical break. The driving force behind this is really to continue to innovate for television and allow our many fans around the world to get a little bit closer to what's going on behind the scenes.
--- I don't like this one bit. It's just pandering to the media constituents who want to see on-court coaching for "entertainment" purposes. At least Scott was honest about the WTA's motivation in that area. But note that on-court coaching will apply only to WTA events - not majors.
All in all, the Roadmap is an impressive achievement, and perhaps it's best viewed as a blueprint for the future - cue the "living document" arguments - than the system by which women's tennis is now destined to operate for the forseeable future. Some tennis insiders will undoubtedly argue that players simply should not be forced to play anywhere, or anytime: Just stage the tournaments, figure out the rankings points on offer, and let the players do what they wish. The real strength or weakness of the Roadmap will be abundantly clear when we see the degree to which the WTA players live up to its considerable demands.
I have to hand it to Larry Scott; when he first took office I had my doubts about his abilities to lead the WTA out of the wilderness. But whether you like the Roadmap or not, the facts and figures cited above suggest that Scott has brought an high degree of order - and commercial viability - to the WTA game, and that whether the plan works or not, it's a plan that had to be formulated and sold to the very players who will now have to show just how seriously they took their "yes" votes on it.
Congrats to Scott and the WTA, and good luck in arriving at your destination; at least you've got a map now!