After looking last week at the semantic shenanigans on the men's tour – the ATP about to become the ATP World Tour and its events now labelled Masters 1000s, Masters 500s and Masters 250s – it's time to check out what's happening with the WTA Tour in 2009.
While nothing rivals the ATP changing its name for the third time in nine years (more about that later), the WTA Tour is also renaming (a.k.a. rebranding) its various levels of tournaments.
As with the men, this does not seem necessary, especially because the old system – Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV events – had the quaint touch of employing Roman numerals as well as being very clear about the hierarchy of tournaments, all of which are in the niches below the four Grand Slams.
Now the top-level tournaments will be known as the Premier Mandatory, Premier Five, Premier and Premier Open. Additionally, there are lower-level ‘International' events, which will be allowed no more than one player in the top-20.
The self-explanatory Mandatory tournaments are Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid (a new mixed event on clay before the French Open) and Beijing in the fall, while the Premier Five are Dubai, Rome, Montreal/Toronto, Cincinnati and Tokyo.
In virtually the same manner as the men, there are now 12 tournaments in the year that the women have to play – the four Slams, the four Mandatory events and four of the five Premier Five.
There has been much talk over the past few years about the WTA Tour's Roadmap grand redesign to transform the women's game. After extensive research and much discussion, mainly about how to solve the growing problem of superstars withdrawing from tournaments (usually because of injury), the final result does not appear greatly different from the current situation.
In an effort to lighten the burden on the women, the tour will now use one fewer tournament (17 to 16) when calculating player rankings and add one more week (seven to eight) to the off-season.
But the bottom line is that these changes don't appear likely to significantly increase the odds of Maria Sharapova (shoulder), Serena Williams (knee), Venus Williams (various ailments) and other headliners like Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic remaining healthy and playing their full commitment of 16 tournaments.
There are other aspects of the Roadmap, including sanctions for missing Mandatory events – this affects the highly-publicized Williams sisters' boycott of Indian Wells since their troubles with the crowd there in 2001. If, as planned, they skip Indian Wells next year, they would not be penalized until 2010, which seems a long way away. In that case, they would have to miss the following event (Miami) in 2010, but could avoid any sanction by performing promotional activities for Indian Wells somewhere within the overall geographical area of the tournament. It's all a little fuzzy and who knows what could have changed by then.
Big prize money increases are also part of the Roadmap, with the Mandatory events up to $4.5-million (all currency U.S.), an amount equivalent to the men's top-tier tournaments. That could present problems for Indian Wells because it's a big jump (from $2.1-million) for an event that has no title sponsor for 2009 after losing Pacific Life.
The Rogers Cup, as a Premier Five event, will go from $1.34-million to $2-million.
Good news is that the WTA Tour plans to begin offering a live-streaming package of its elite events similar to what the ATP has done the past few years with its Masters Series.
Another item in the WTA Tour's 2009 plans is the continuation of on-court coaching.
