A girls’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 concerning the influence on the lads’s occasion the week after.
Male gamers raised considerations concerning the high quality of the grass courts they are going to inherit on the historic venue in west London.
The ATP has requested a evaluate happen after subsequent yr’s inaugural two-week occasion, however the LTA says it’s “very assured will probably be a everlasting transfer”.
“Now we have reassured the ATP on a number of events that there gained’t be an influence on the integrity and efficiency of the courtroom,” mentioned LTA director of main occasions Chris Pollard.
“The ATP desire a evaluate on the finish of the 2025 event. Our focus stays on delivering a very profitable event and we due to this fact stay very assured will probably be a everlasting transfer, and the ATP will proceed to assist us in internet hosting a girls’s and males’s occasion on the Queen’s Membership into the long run.”
The LTA says it has studied climate circumstances, the density of the soil and potential put on to areas of the courtroom, such because the baseline.
Nonetheless, there might be fewer out there courts for males who arrive early to practise and put together for the qualifying occasion, which can 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 increase the profile of the ladies’s recreation and improve the visibility of the game at the start of the grass-court season.
Final yr solely 5 of the world’s prime 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 might be decrease for the ladies’s event, though each occasions could have ‘500 standing’ and happen on the similar venue.
“It’s a really advanced scenario provided that prize cash in the end is about by the WTA and the ATP,” Pollard defined.
“We’re delighted that the WTA are transferring to an equal prize cash foundation. In the end the lads’s event at Queen’s at present 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 rising 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’s going to as a substitute substitute Surbiton as host of the lads’s and girls’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 might be downgraded to 250 standing, which suggests higher restrictions on who can enter.
As a WTA 500 occasion is staged in Germany in the identical week, no top-10 participant might be allowed to enter Eastbourne – except they’re British, the defending champion, a Grand Slam champion or former world primary.
