The Queen’s Membership is poised to stage a pre-Wimbledon match for girls for the primary time since 1973.
If plans are accepted, a WTA match shall be held the week after the French Open in June, on grass courts which shall be utilized by males the next week.
Though no closing resolution has been made, the LTA and The All England Membership are eager to deliver a WTA occasion again to London after greater than half a century.
The WTA might want to sanction the brand new match, which might begin in 2025.
It’s anticipated to switch Eastbourne as the only WTA 500 occasion staged within the UK within the run as much as Wimbledon.
Eastbourne will stay in its conventional place, within the week earlier than Wimbledon, however is prone to be downgraded to WTA 250 standing. This implies fewer rating factors shall be awarded, and prize cash might probably fall.
The concept has stemmed from a year-long overview of the grass courtroom season, which has additionally been new methods of maximising the impression of these summer season weeks.
If all events may be persuaded, the brand new schedule ought to seem within the 2025 WTA calendar, which is anticipated to be printed in April.
Margaret Courtroom, Chris Evert and Ann Jones all gained the ladies’s title at Queen’s earlier than the occasion led to 1973. It’s felt a return to Queen’s would increase the visibility and profile of the ladies’s sport.
Attracting a discipline of acceptable high quality could show difficult, nonetheless, as many prime gamers choose to not enter a match within the week after a Grand Slam: on this case in anticipation of a deep run on the clay courts of Roland Garros.
Final 12 months, for instance, simply 5 top-20 gamers contested the WTA tournaments in s-Hertogenbosch and Nottingham within the week after the French Open.
Ticket costs could properly have to be considerably decrease than the hefty sums related to the boys’s occasion. However with the stands going up for the boys, and plenty of business companions already supporting the ATP match, the LTA will hope that is additionally a possibility to extend income.
The courts at The Queen’s Membership shall be put below unprecedented pressure, though analysis carried out for the LTA and the All England Membership suggests every week of ladies’s matches causes much less stress to grass than an identical load of males’s matches.
The ladies will get first use of the brand new courts, though a number of the males could choose the more durable and fewer slippery courts they are going to inherit.
The way forward for the WTA occasions in Nottingham and Birmingham isn’t but clear. There isn’t any scope for an additional UK grass-court occasion, so it seems as if one of many two will stop to stage a WTA match.
Nottingham has historically been the venue within the week reserved for the brand new Queen’s Membership match. The Edgbaston Priory Membership has been staging a match within the second week of the grass courtroom season since 1982, however the occasion has persistently failed to interrupt even.
It stays to be seen whether or not the enjoying discipline at Eastbourne, which final 12 months featured 5 of the world’s prime 10, shall be affected by the match being downgraded to a WTA 250.
There shall be fewer rating factors on supply than on the week’s different match within the German city of Unhealthy Homburg, however a lot of those that do nonetheless need to play within the week earlier than Wimbledon could choose the shorter journey to The All England Membership from the south coast of England.
“The LTA and the All England Membership have been reviewing the grass courtroom season with the intention of enhancing the expertise for followers and gamers,” the LTA mentioned in an announcement.
“We proceed to debate the long run grass courtroom calendar with the ATP and WTA, nonetheless, in the mean time no closing selections have been taken.”