In the coming year, the lower levels of professional men’s tennis will change a lot. A look at the new ATP Challenger Tour.
Professional men’s tennis is facing some changes. It seems a bit as if the federations want to prepare for the time ahead without their top stars Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic or Andy Murray. Of course, the financial aspect also plays an important role here. The Davis Cup is being turned upside down almost beyond recognition by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), and the ATP is also following suit with various innovations.
The revival of a World Team Cup format and the resulting restructuring in the Australian tennis calendar are just one example. Already in November last year, the #NextGen finals were a completely new competition with the corresponding “Race to Milan” and marketing campaigns. What is often forgotten at this point was the funeral of the ATP-Challenger-Tour-Finals.
From 2011 to 2015, the annual best of the so-called “substructure” met annually in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Challenger finals were by far the best endowed tournament of the ATP Challenger Tour with a total prize money of US$220,000 and 125 world ranking points for the tournament winner. Now this event, which admittedly was hardly in the focus of public interest, was more or less silently liquidated.
It was to be feared that in the future the “second league of men’s tennis” might be treated even more negligently than it already was. But it came differently. As many of the “next generation” players are primarily on the Challenger Tour, ATP has at least intensified its internal coverage with live streams and more extensive coverage of the tournaments away from the major arenas and squares. So it was foreseeable that the organisation’s drive for reform would not stop at the Challenger Tour either. Here, too, corresponding changes are planned for the coming season.
The primary goal is to improve the promotion possibilities from one level to the next within the professional tour. The aim is to provide players with a clear, unambiguous and fair path, which nevertheless means that the total number of professionals appearing in the ATP World Ranking should be reduced. Over 2,000 players are still listed there at the moment. This can be achieved by abolishing the allocation of world ranking points at the majority of tournaments on the ITF World Tennis Tour, which will be launched next year.
The ATP Challenger Tour is also to be professionalized and the standards at the tournaments improved. With approximately 180 tournaments in 40 countries, this is a challenging task.
However, with all the changes announced, one constant remains. The new season will also traditionally open with the Hartplatz event in Nouméa, New Caledonia. The first part of the new tournament calendar has already revealed this. Playford in Australia and Waco in Texas are the other venues in the first week of 2019.