Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
This is the time of year when the tennis tour really kicks it into gear. You have three Masters Series events in rapid succession (Monte Carlo, Rome, Hamburg, all on red clay in Europe, all nearly close enough to make you consider driving instead of flying), culminating with the first of the spring/smmer outdoor Grand Slams, the French Open. Can you say "Gentlemen, Start your engines!"
Note that I did not address the players as "Gentlepersons." For this is also the time of year when the WTA ladies fall off the radar. Now there's a bit of odd planning -- or something more sinister? -- for you. Just when we're building momentum for the most intensely watched tennis events of the year, the women are kicking back. What if they gave a tennis circuit and nobody came? Well, that's exactly what they did.
The hugely successful ATP European clay-court circuit revved to life in Monaco, producing a glamorous Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal final as the first of its main features. That same week, the women were engaged in Dea … er, Fed Cup, in which your garden-variety train wreck of a match, featuring mighty Serena Williams vs. Caroline Maes (ranked No. 227), at Delray Beach, Fla., was fairly representative.
This week, the ATP is in Barcelona, a city that's on the short list of best tennis cities in the world. The top seeds are Nadal, Nikolay Davydenko, David Nalbandian. The WTA, by contrast, is in Budapest, where the top seeds are Tathiana Garbin, Martina Muller and somebody else. (Garbin, Muller and somebody else, Maria Kirilenko, all failed to advance past the second round.)
Eastern Europe is an emerging market, and one day those events in Poland and Budapest might be a defensible WTA answer to Barcelona or Rome. Budapest and Warsaw are vibrant cities populated by smart, hard-working people -- that is, they aren't Paris, with its flip-flop wearing, "Sopranos"-watching, America-hating indolent youth. But right now, the intriguing fact is an unpleasant one for gung-ho gender equity freaks: Western Europe doesn't get all fired up about clay-court tennis, at least not the kind played by women. Or maybe they're just not that stoked about women's tennis, period.
The men's game is in the midst of a high-octane celebration of the clay-court game. (And part of this is a shifting, mobile, ethno-centric celebration of all things not American, British or Australian, grass and hard courts being the "Anglo" surfaces of choice.) The women are stuck with a tour that, although it includes Estoril, Berlin and Rome, wanders around going from Prague (Czech Republic), to Rabat (Morocco), to Strasbourg (yawn), to Istanbul. How's that for a Midnight Express?
Just watch those customs agents, girls!
Join Peter Bodo's next chat on Wednesday, May 2 at 1 p.m. ET.
