Time To Give Top Players Fewer Summer Choices

The tennis season — 11 months long, global, and seemingly held together by the paste you learned to make from flour and water as a child — has many, many flaws. Too much time between the Australian Open and the French Open, too little time between the French Open and Wimbledon. Too many tournaments on clay, too few tournaments on grass. The team championships, the Davis and Federation Cups, have enough months between rounds for fans to forget which countries have been eliminated, and are so poorly placed in the general calendar that the best players often don't play.

None of these, however, tops the chaos that characterizes the few weeks following Wimbledon, despite the effort by the United States Tennis Association to impose some order on the early summer with its U.S. Open Series.

The Series, now in its fourth year, began last week in Los Angeles. Where were the world's best players? Roger Federer rested. Rafael Nadal, his knee still sore from a taxing final three days at Wimbledon, swiped some easy ranking points at a small clay tournament in Stuttgart, Germany. Novak Djokovic, the newly minted no. 3 player in the world, presumably relaxed in his Serbian home and prepared for a clay tournament in Croatia that starts today. Nikolay Davydenko and Mikhail Youzhny, two top-ranked Russians who reached the semifinals of last year's U.S. Open, played in the Netherlands — also on clay — last week. Venus Williams needed a break after Wimbledon and a narrow Fed Cup loss to Russia, while Serena's wrist, injured at Wimbledon, caused her to withdraw from the first women's event in the Series, which begins today in Stanford, Calif.

In no way is the Series to blame for this. As a marketing tool, it has had its share of successes. There's a lot more tennis on television: between ESPN, the Tennis Channel, CBS, and NBC, fans can watch 200 hours of tennis this summer. The USTA claims the Series has doubled the summer television audience since it began in 2004, and those tennis road trip commercials aren't half bad — at least viewers see some new faces, and not just Americans, on the tube.

Yet despite all its appeal — and a potential $1 million bonus for the man and woman who win the Series and go on to win the U.S. Open — the Series cannot deliver the best players in the world week in and week out. And it won't until the season as a whole receives the overhaul it deserves.

The early summer didn't matter as much to American tennis 25 years ago. For the last few years, Arlen Kantarian, the CEO of the USTA, has made this point, backed up by data he totes around in his briefcase, to any reporter who will listen. In the 1980s, according to the USTA, men's tennis had about 20 tournaments in America and 35 in Europe. There are now more events on the tour, yet only 13 in America. The women's tour has gone from 20 events in America and 10 to 15 in Europe, in the 1980s, to 25 in Europe and 11 in America.

The demise of events in Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Tampa, and, after this year, San Diego, has put more pressure on the USTA to have a strong summer. Players, of course, don't think too much about this. Federer doesn't need to play a lot of tournaments, or even a lot of tennis: Not too many people take a week off during Wimbledon and still win it. Nadal, who has an outside chance at the no. 1 ranking if he dominates the rest of the season, probably could have won with two injured knees and a broken racket in Stuttgart, where he didn't lose a set.

What purpose does a clay court tournament in July serve a global sport that has a full clay season from April to mid-June? Stuttgart and Umag, Croatia, can keep their tournaments — by no means should we try to upset another tennis economy. One can't blame Nadal or Djokovic for wanting to play these events, either. The point is, players of their caliber shouldn't have that option.

When a tournament contributes so little to the sport as a whole, in terms of marketing and money, the tour shouldn't want a big star to waste his or her time there. Players ranked inside the top 10, at least, shouldn't be allowed. After Wimbledon, the U.S. Open Series should be the next stop, not Stuttgart, Umag, or Sopot, Poland. And this isn't just about favoring America. The same can be said for our tournaments and players in early spring: Andy Roddick and James Blake should not be playing on red clay in Houston when they could be in Europe with the rest of the best during the real clay court season.

Nothing like this is going to happen in the short term, of course, and frankly, things might get worse for American tennis before they get better. During Wimbledon, Larry Scott, the CEO of the WTA Tour, unveiled his tour's remodeled 2009 calendar and a controversial move for its year-end tournament, which will be held in Doha, Qatar, between 2008 and 2010 (it will then move to Istanbul between 2011 and 2013). The Qatar Tennis Federation paid dearly for the rights to host the event: $4.5 million in total prize money, same as the men receive at their year-end tournament. When asked about moving a premier women's sporting event to a country that's lacking in women's rights, Scott said: "We have a progressive view on that. Our players are an inspiration."The time difference between America and Qatar didn't upset him too much, either. He said Qatar would at least be better for European viewers, "where, frankly, our biggest audiences are."

How can the USTA compete with that? In recent months, Kantarian has kicked around the idea of starting a U.S. Circuit — think professional golf — that would rival the current structure of the tour, though a USTA spokesman said any such move is a long way off and not part of the group's current strategy. There's some talk of seeding players at the U.S. Open according to their performance in the Series, too.

The fact that these things are part of the discussion at all brings home how in need of repair the professional tennis schedule is these days. Perhaps the USTA can offer that $1 million bonus to anyone who can convince the tours, tournament directors, and the International Tennis Federation to sort it all out, for the overall good of everyone.

tperrotta@nysun.com