Madrid Madrigal

(Ed. note: TennisWorld never sleeps. While we at TW have been contemplating the contents of Ubaldo Scanagatta's recent, ominous email regarding the fate of certain Masters Series events, our man on the scene in Shanghai, Miguel Seabra, has been doing the hard digging. Here is his report on the hottest topic in the political back rooms of the game - PB)

There’s a pretty well-known phrase and song lyric in Spain, a nod to the love/hate relationship that so many people have with the Spanish capital: Madrid Me Mata (Madrid is Killing Me). Well, a lot of European tennis venues are feeling that way about Madrid these days.

The “Madrid Move” - a plan to move the Madrid Masters Series event from the Fall to the Spring - has been the most talked about issue backstage at the Masters Cup here in Shanghai. It appears that one Ion Tiriac (see Pete's post, The Chimeral Seminal), the force and money behind the Madrid event,  wants to dump his mid-October date and stage a 10-day, Indian Wells or Miami-style, dual gender event as a tune-up for Roland Garros.

As we're in Shanghai, it's appropriate to say this is the equivalent of a bull let loose in a China shop.

That transition, if it occurs, will wreak havoc with an already crowded schedule: the trail of clay leading to Paris is crammed into just seven weeks. It starts in Valencia and culminates with St-Polten and the World Cup at Dusseldorf, but those first and last weeks are the least important ones. The heart of the season - and the problem - is that within five weeks, you have three Masters Series events (Rome, Monte Carlo, Hamburg), plus Barcelona, as well as Estoril and Munich doubling up in the same week.

João Lagos, the Estoril Open director, is not overly concerned. He figures Tiriac is a far greater threat to the three Masters Series events, even though Lagos has contemplated boosting the prestige and profile of his event by going bigger. But it's safe to say that the other Tournament Directors are far from being happy.

So, I tried to gauge reactions to Tiriac's ambitions and the issues surrounding it. In fact, I had an interesting conversation with the driving force behind one of those Elite Three events (he asked not to be quoted or identified). Surprisingly, he feels that something must be done because the schedule is so dense. He told me that representatives of the Elite Three got together and brought a radical proposal  to the ATP. They agreed in principle to stage only two of the events each year, on a rotational basis - that is, the tournaments would take turns sitting out, year-by-year. I thought that was a pretty sound, original idea. But the ATP issued a loud, resounding "No!"

Monte-Carlo, the third traditional,  high-profile event, couldn't stage a combined event even if it had the money - there simply isn't enough space at the MC Country Club, one of the most spectacular and beautiful of all tournament settings. Hamburg has problems aplenty: it recently invested huge sums to put a roof over the Center Court of the Rothenbaum Club, but the economic and tennis recession in Germany is killing the promoters.

The Elite Three (Rome, Monte Carlo, Hamburg) are  all either owned by, or feature strong ties to, their respective national associations (In addition, Hamburg has some serious financing from the Arab world). So it seems natural that the group would seek the help and support of Christian Bimes, the president of the French Tennis Federation, in seeking to a solution to their dilemma. But Bimes won't throw his  weight behind his European colleagues.

The mundane boss of Roland Garros is also the boss of the Masters Series Paris-Bercy. He would be more than happy to see Madrid disappear from the radar in the autumn, so that he can move the Parisian indoor event back a few weeks in order to prevent what has become the predictable spectacle of  late withdrawals that has devastated his event in recent years (giving the French federation a pinch in the wallet, too).So, the Three Musketeers, who, just like in Alexandre Dumas’s novel of that name, are actually four (Monte Carlo, Rome, Hamburg, plus Barcelona), are trying to present a united front. It's that One for all and all for one! thing. . .

What, you may wonder, is Barcelona's stake?

Well, Madrid would be a natural, semi-local competitor. Barcelona has strong bonds with IMG, and it's held in the Catalan capital of Spanish tennis. But the Real club can't accomodate a combined event, and doing what is necessary to make one viable would be far too risky and expensive to almost anyone but - yes, Ion Tiriac. He has the money (in his pocket, in cash, probably) and political clout, and Madrid has the venue - and the complete support of the civic infrastructure.

In fact, the Spanish capital wants to stage big events for reasons of its own: it wants to stay in the running for an Olympic Games bid, and demonstrating that you can stage a huge international event really furthers that cause. Tiriac’s ultra-upscale Corporate Lounge is another big sales ticket: Right now, fully 87 companies are lined up, hoping to get the next free space in the Masters Series Madrid Sponsors' Village. Tiriac has also worked his hospitality magic for heavy hitters at the recent WTA Championships, which offered the best VIP Lounge ever seen at a women’s event!

Ion Tiriac knows how to do things right, and the new Madrid tournament on clay (the former Spring event held there went defunct in 1994) could actually be a great experience. But my sources tell me that the Elite Three and Barcelona are so opposed to an incursion by Madrid that they could fight it out with the ATP on legal turf. I can understand that: Madrid has its own week; if it migrates to the Spring, there will be major losses for the others. “2009 is still far away," my source said, "A lot of things could happen before then. . .”

But European tennis politicos are also concerned that the Old Continent will suffer under Etienne de Villiers  ATP leadership.  As my source said, "Europe could lose two Masters Series events shortly, plus one week of the  post-Wimbledon European clay court season. The French Federation actually thinks a combined event before Roland Garros would be good, even though the USTA rejected the concept of a big combined event before the U.S. Open."

Hey, Pete, what do you think?  (Ed. note: I'll post the first comment and address it there, Mikey - PB)

Anyway, the Madrid Move is a subject I’ve been discussing with the veteran Spanish journalists including Miguel Luengo, Pedro Hernandez, Manel Serras - and with Italy's Ubaldo Scanagatta.Yesterday, Ubaldo and I caught up with de Villiers and had a chat about some of these issues with him.

I came away with a sense that de Villiers has already made his decision, although it won't be announced until the start of 2007, probably at Miami. And Etienne made this curious promise: "Every tournament will be happy with the outcome."

By my side, Ubaldo made his point about epic five-setters, and their value to tournaments besides the Grand Slams (see the post below, Backpacks and Breaking News). But Etienne seemed pretty firm about five-set, sub-major finals being a thing of the past, as soon as existing contracts allow. And here's another change: Masters Series draws that presently feature 64 players will be cut back to 56. In other words,  a bye-round for top seeds.

As I close down this delicate matter for all European tennis fans (especially those from the countries involved, but also the traditionalists), the thing that strikes me is that the men who launched all this fuss, Tiriac and his Tennis Director, Gerard Tsobanian, were nowhere to be seen among all the pooh-bahs assembled in Shanghai. . .

- Miguel Seabra,  in Shanghai

PS – I noticed a small detail in today’s Nalbandian win over Roddick. The Argentinean was losing  crucial points here and there in his previous matches (against Federer and Ljubicic) by attempting backhand stopvolleys that either became gifts for his opponents to whack back or that never made it over the net. Against Roddick he hit backhand volleys, deep. And the way he kept eye contact with his entourage made me think he learned his lesson from the previous matches.

Of course, besides that detail, there was the obvious: Andy's decision to serve and volley and come to the net in the face of Nalbandian’s fabulous two-handed backhand was suicidal – maybe Andy just wanted to take a better look at that backhand, so that he could learn the mechanics of the shot. . .

Estoril is the only combined (dual gender) event in that run up to Roland Garros, but it's a one-week deal.  In order to stage an event on the Indian Wells model, the other events would have to either buy a WTA week, an additional week from both tours (10 days, plus qualifying), or both.

Rome has men’s and women’s events, of course, but they're back-to-back, not combined. Hamburg once operated on the same model, but the women don't play there anymore.