A ladies’s event will return to the Queen’s Membership for the primary time in additional than 50 years in 2025 following discussions with the ATP in regards to the affect on the boys’s occasion the week after.
Male gamers raised considerations in regards to the high quality of the grass courts they are going to inherit on the historic venue in west London.
The ATP has requested a evaluation happen after subsequent 12 months’s inaugural two-week occasion, however the LTA says it’s “very assured it is going to be a everlasting transfer”.
“We’ve got reassured the ATP on a number of events that there gained’t be an affect on the integrity and efficiency of the courtroom,” mentioned LTA director of main occasions Chris Pollard.
“The ATP desire a evaluation on the finish of the 2025 event. Our focus stays on delivering a extremely profitable event and we due to this fact stay very assured it is going to be a everlasting transfer, and the ATP will proceed to assist us in internet hosting a ladies’s and males’s occasion on the Queen’s Membership into the long run.”
The LTA says it has studied climate situations, the density of the soil and potential put on to areas of the courtroom, such because the baseline.
Nevertheless, there will probably be fewer accessible courts for males who arrive early to practise and put together for the qualifying occasion, which is able to happen on the ultimate weekend of the WTA event.
The ladies will play at Queen’s within the week instantly after the French Open. The LTA hopes that can elevate the profile of the ladies’s recreation and enhance the visibility of the game at first of the grass-court season.
Final 12 months solely 5 of the world’s high 20 gamers competed within the week after Roland Garros, however the LTA believes the “iconic venue and pristine grass” of Queen’s will tempt extra to play.
Prize cash will probably be decrease for the ladies’s event, although each occasions can have ‘500 standing’ and happen on the similar venue.
“It’s a really advanced state of affairs provided that prize cash finally is ready by the WTA and the ATP,” Pollard defined.
“We’re delighted that the WTA are transferring to an equal prize cash foundation. Finally the boys’s event at Queen’s presently is the one worthwhile event the LTA runs – the opposite tournaments at this cut-off date aren’t commercially profitable.
“I’m not conscious that throughout the WTA Tour season there’s a precedent for an additional WTA Tour occasion unilaterally growing prize cash.”
The WTA 250 occasion at Nottingham will transfer again per week in order that in future it follows the ladies’s event at Queen’s, and the Edgbaston Priory Membership will lose the WTA occasion it first staged in 1982, when Billie Jean King gained the title.
It can as a substitute change Surbiton as host of the boys’s and ladies’s Challenger tournaments performed within the first week of the grass-court season, because the French Open is coming to a boil at Roland Garros.
Eastbourne will nonetheless stage a mixed occasion within the week earlier than Wimbledon, however the WTA event there will probably be downgraded to 250 standing, which suggests larger restrictions on who can enter.
As a WTA 500 occasion is staged in Germany in the identical week, no top-10 participant will probably be allowed to enter Eastbourne – until they’re British, the defending champion, a Grand Slam champion or former world primary.