The Garden Tennis Affiliation has confirmed that Queen’s Membership will stage a WTAÂ Tour occasion subsequent summer season in a reshuffle of the grass-court season.
The governing physique has cited a need to lift the profile of ladies’s tennis and put it up for sale to extra individuals for the adjustments, which is able to see the Birmingham and Eastbourne tournaments lowered in standing.
The brand new ladies’s occasion, which is able to happen within the week following the French Open, means a tour degree ladies’s match is coming to London for the primary time in additional than 50 years.
It means the Edgbaston Priory membership in Birmingham, which has staged a WTA Tour occasion since 1982, will now host a mixed males’s and ladies’s second-tier match within the second week of the French Open.
The joint males’s and ladies’s occasion in Nottingham will transfer to the identical week as the lads’s match at Queen’s, with the mixed occasion in Eastbourne the week previous to Wimbledon now on the lowest 250 degree for each excursions.
Final month, the LTA revealed {that a} sticking level was considerations from the ATP over the impression on its occasion, second solely in standing to Wimbledon throughout the British grass swing, of a ladies’s match the earlier week.
Chris Pollard, the LTA’s director of main occasions and digital, admitted the association may find yourself solely being for a yr if the male gamers are sad.
“We have absolute confidence that we can stage a two-week event at the Queen’s Club,” he stated.
“Obviously the Championships at Wimbledon prove that grass can withstand two weeks of tennis. We’ve got independent data that really provides a lot of evidence that the men’s week will not suffer in any way, shape or form.
“We have had many discussions with each excursions in respect of that. (The ATP) have given the inexperienced gentle for the match to happen in 2025 and we proceed to have an ongoing dialogue with them in respect of the success of the 2025 match.
The 2025 season will mark the second full yr of the WTA’s revised calendar construction, which was launched to higher showcase the highest athletes taking part in the highest occasions and help sustainable long-term progress
“They would like to consider what happens after 2025 but we remain in very close dialogue with them on that point and remain very confident that it will be a permanent change.”
Disparities in prize cash ranges between the excursions imply the lads will earn more cash at their match, whereas Pollard pressured the LTA is dedicated to each occasions being on free-to-air TV.
In the meantime, the second-tier occasion at Surbiton that has kicked off the grass-court season will likely be scrapped from subsequent yr however Ilkley will proceed to host a males’s and ladies’s match.
