Restructuring Prize Money on the ITF Tour

In the past year or so, there have been several excellent posts and letters written by lower level tennis players concerning the issue of lack of pay on the Challenger and ITF Tours. The main two that I would recommend reading as a prelude to reading this post are James McGee’s blog post entitled ‘Financing the Tour’ (available here) and Tomas Buchhass’ recent open letter to the ITF (original here or translation here). They give an enlightening account of the difficulties of financing a career on the minor tours and how the glamorous image of a professional tennis player is no more than a myth for the majority of players outside the top 50 or so players.

ITF events usually take place with almost no spectators in places
such as Antalya and Sharm El Sheikh

The biggest problem is the prize money issue at the lowest levels of the game. A brief bit of history to begin with. On the women’s side, in 1984 there were 26 low level tournaments in Europe and 14 in the USA with a total prize money of $340,000. This roughly works out at $8,500 prize money for each of the tournament assuming they were equally split. In 2014, the lowest level of ITF tournament has a total prize money of $10,000. In other words, in the past 30 years, the prize money at the lowest level of tournament has increased by $1,500 or 17.6%. At the same time, the prize money at Wimbledon has increased from £1,461,896 in 1984 to £25,000,000 – an increase of £23,538,104 or just over 1,600%. In 1984, had they decided that the prize money at tournaments would be linked to the inflation rate, that $8,500 tournament, given the rate of inflation in the UK over the past 30 years, would now be offering prize money of just over $25,000. In real terms, the prize money at that level has dropped massively in the past three decades.

Every player will have to come through the ITF and Challenger Tours at some stage during their career. The top players may only spend a brief period there, but according to the ITF website, “the WTA singles ranking list for the end of 2012, released on 31 December, showed that all but two players have, at some point during their career, competed on the ITF Pro Circuit.” Without a minor tour to ease the transition from juniors to seniors, there would arguably be no senior tour.

While the ITF is a different organisation to the WTA or ATP, they are inextricably linked. They are dependent on each other and so cooperation between the two can only be beneficial. I say this as an assumption to my proposal for changing the tennis pay structure, which requires cooperation between the three organisations.

I shall focus on the women’s tour, but the same principal could easily be applied to the men’s, albeit with the slight complication of the Challenger Tour, which means that men have three levels, rather than two.

In 2014, including Grand Slams and the Hopman Cup, there were 59 WTA senior tour events. At the same time, there were 596 ITF events during the year. The grand total of prize money that was given out in the 59 WTA senior events was just under $107.5m, while the grand total for the 596 ITF events was just over $11m.

The ITF Tour itself is broken down into various different levels of tournament, classified by the amount of prize money and ranking points available. The table below shows the different categories, the number of each tournament and the total prize money at each level.

Category	Number of Tournaments	Total Prize Money
$10k	388	$3,880,000
$15k	26	$390,000
$25k	120	$3,000,000
$50k	44	$2,200,000
$75k	7	$525,000
$100k	11	$1,100,000

The truth is that tennis can only support a limited number of professional players. Regardless of prize money, with a limited number of tournaments, there are only a set number of players that can ever hope to make a living from the sport. There are roughly 2,000 ranked players in the WTA – a number that has been roughly steady for a while and is likely to remain so in the future. However, given the real decrease in prize money at the lowest levels, many players are being priced out of the sport. Increasingly, a sponsor or rich family are becoming the main way that young players can afford to compete on the tour.

Let us take a random tournament on the WTA Tour to look at. Just as an example, let us focus on the WTA event in Pattaya City. In 2012, the total prize money was $220k. This rose to $235k in 2013 and $250k in 2014. In other words, it is increasing by $15k per year. Based on this, in 2015, the prize money will rise by 6% to $265k while the prize money on the ITF Tour will not change.

What if each of the 59 tournaments on the main WTA Tour were to donate a small percentage of the prize money that is available to a pool that is used to increase the prize money at the ITF level? This is where cooperation between the ITF, the WTA and the tournaments themselves would have to be improved. Had this happened at the start of 2014, how might this be able to change the ITF Tour?

What if each tournament pledged to donate 4.75% of their prize money to a newly created ITF pool? This would raise just over $5.1m, which combined with the current $11.1m that is already on offer, would give us a prize money pool for the ITF Tour of $16.2m.

James McGee wrote an excellent piece about the struggles on the minor tours

How would this affect the WTA tournaments though? Returning to our earlier example of Pattaya City, the total prize money for the tournament in 2014 would drop from $250k to $238k – still a prize money increase from the 2013 level, albeit only a small increase. Assuming the 4.75% was deducted equally from each round, the winner would now receive a cheque for just under $41,000 rather than $43,000, while a player losing in the first round would receive $2,095 rather than $2,200. Obviously, it would be up to individual tournaments to determine how they restructured their prize money. A tournament may rather deduct more from the winner’s cheque to reduce the deduction for the first round losers, although it is up to them. Either way, we are not looking at huge reductions in prize money.

How would this affect the ITF though? Using the increased pool of prize money, we could convert the $10k events to $15k events. While this is still well below what they would be had they been linked to inflation, it immediately brings about a 50% increase in prize money for each event. Similarly, the $15k events could be increased to $25k events and so forth. The table below shows the changes that could be made:

Previous Category	New Category	New Total Prize Money	Prize Money Increase
$10k	$15k	$5,820,000	50.0%
$15k	$25k	$650,000	66.7%
$25k	$40k	$4,800,000	60.0%
$50k	$75k	$3,300,000	50.0%
$75k	$75k	$525,000	0.0%
$100k	$100k	$1,100,000	0.0%

The new total prize money for our new events is $16,195,000, which leaves us just over $4k spare from our new prize money pool. While there may be an argument for looking to increase the $75k and $100k events as well, this is not the priority at the current time.

Let us look in slightly more detail at what this would mean for a former $10k event. The table below shows the prize money changes for each round, assuming the extra prize money was distributed equally across rounds:

Round	Old Prize Money (Singles)	New Prize Money (Singles)	Old Prize Money (Doubles)	New Prize Money (Doubles)
Winner	$1,568	$2,352	$637	$955.50
Finalist	$980	$1,470	$343	$514.50
SF	$490	$735	$196	$294
QF	$245	$367.50	$98	$147
R16	$196	$294	$49	$73.50
R32	$98	$147	-

The winner of a former ITF $10k event would now receive $2,352 rather than $1,568 – an increase of $784. Obviously only one player can win, but a player that lost in the second round would now receive almost $100 more than they would have previously. While this does not necessarily sound like a huge amount of money, it could make a huge difference to players at that level. If you played 30 tournaments in a year and reached the second round of every tournament, that would equate to an extra $2,940 over the course of the year.

The table below shows the same calculations for one of the 120 former $25k events:

Round	Old Prize Money (Singles)	New Prize Money (Singles)	Old Prize Money (Doubles)	New Prize Money (Doubles)
Winner	$3,919	$6,270.40	$1,437	$2,299.20
Finalist	$2,091	$3,345.60	$719	$1,150.40
SF	$1,144	$1,830.40	$359	$574.40
QF	$654	$1,046.40	$196	$313.60
R16	$392	$627.20	$131	$209.60
R32	$228	$364.80

A player that reached the QF of a former $25k event and also lost in the QF of the doubles would now receive a cheque for $1,360 for their week’s work, rather than the $850 that they would previously. Given that James McGee estimated that an average weekly expenditure with no coach for him was roughly around €1,200 or $1,500, we are beginning to get toward the point where players can start to break even at a slightly lower level.

This might start to mean that players rise up the rankings based on their natural ability and hard work rather than their ability to afford a coach, whether that be through coming from a well-off federation, a rich benefactor or wildcards into bigger events.

Will this happen? Almost certainly not. There has been no interest in changing the prize money structure at the ITF level for many years, so it is tough to see this changing in the near future. Would the WTA, ATP and ITF be able to come to an agreement to see this prize money pooling happen? Probably not.

However, something does need to be done. It is madness that there has been virtually no change in absolute prize money in almost three decades and a huge fall in prize money in real terms. Maybe this idea is not the way forward, but the debate needs to be had. Otherwise, we may well just see more and more talented players giving up on the game too early simply because they cannot afford to keep playing.

Lower Level Tennis Weekly Review 2

ITF

ITF $75k Events

From the first day onward, there was just one European in the entire draw at the $75k event in Toyota, Japan, but that had little impact as An-Sophie Mestach stormed to her fourth title of 2014 and the biggest win of her career. She dropped just 13 games all week and capped it off with a dominant 6-1, 6-1 win in the final over Shuko Aoyama. It was an excellent week for the Belgian as, not only did she clinch the title, but she also secured a main draw spot for the 2015 Australian Open. It was just over two years ago that Mestach fell off the rankings list entirely after a series of injuries, but she has now broken the top 100 for the first time in her career. Aoyama's run to the final also clinched her a qualifying spot for the Australian Open.

An-Sophie Mestach clinched an Australian Open main draw spot in Toyota

Another player to clinch their spot at the Australian Open was Kimiko Date-Krumm, whose run to the semi-final lifted her 12 spots in the rankings to #89. She retired after the first set against Mestach in the semi-final, but her week will have delivered the desired outcome, having outed several promising young players in Ozaki and Hibi. Interestingly, it was Hibi's first professional tournament in the country of her birth and her first trip back to Japan in five years.

Date-Krumm was not the only older player to have a good run as former world #19 Tamarine Tanasugarn rolled back the years in a run to the QF. Wins over Namigata, Chang and Kumkhum would have been a good confidence boost for the Thai player and she may even consider entering the Asian wildcard tournament for the Australian Open.

The big loser for the week was undoubtedly Luksika Kumkhum. A QF exit for the top seed means that she drops out of the top 100 and will miss out on a main draw spot at the Australian Open. With second round points to defend in Melbourne, she will need to ensure that she come through qualification to avoid a big drop in her ranking.

ITF $50k Events

New Delhi is hardly renowned as a tennis hot spot, but it could be where the senior career of Ivana Jorovic really took off. The former junior #1 and French Open junior finalist clinched the biggest title of her fledgling career as she lifted the $50k title at the DLTA Complex in New Delhi. She also recorded the biggest win of her career when she took out #2 seed Anastasiya Vasylyeva in the SF before beating fellow teenager Barbora Haas in the battle of two unseeded players in the final. It is a win that lifts her over 100 places in the rankings and sets her up nicely for her first full year in the senior ranks in 2015.

Ivana Jorovic won the biggest title of her career thus far in New Delhi

It also marked the end of a successful year for Barbora Haas, who reached her 8th ITF final of the year, although she will be disappointed to have lifted just the two titles. However, having lost her opening set of this tournament 6-0 against Sofiya Kovalets, she will have been relieved to have simply made it that far.

There was disappointment though for her compatriot, Patricia Mayr-Achleitner. A run to the title would have given her a main draw spot for the Australian Open next year, but a QF defeat to Haas put pay to those hopes and means that she will have to qualify if she hopes to play the first Grand Slam of 2015.

The other $50k event of the week took place on the clay in Asuncion and was won after a herculean effort from Bianca Botto. With the semi-finals and the final taking place on the same day, she had to come from a set and a break down in the semi-final against Pivovarova to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 before beating Florencia Molinero in the final, who had cruised her semi-final earlier in the day. It was a fourth title of 2014 for the Peruvian and the biggest title of her career to date.

There was disappointment for the home fans as first Veronica Cepede Royg, then Montserrat Gonzalez were eliminated by Molinero, with Cepede Royg collapsing to a 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 defeat after losing the last nine games of the match.

ITF $25k Events

There was only one $25k event last week, but it was dominated by the teenagers. Three of the four semi-finalists were aged 18 or under, but it was Oceane Dodin that continued her excellent run of form to lift the title. The results of her last four ITF events read W-F-SF-W and she shows no sign of slowing, having risen over 400 places in the rankings in 2014. It was Latvia teenager and Wimbledon junior champion, Jelena Ostapenko, that she beat 7-5, 6-4 in the final, although Ostapenko might count herself a little lucky to have been there after Kostova collapsed from 6-2, *4-2 ahead in their SF clash. The other semi-finalist was Ukraine's Anhelina Kalinina, who enjoyed a good run by seeing off two seeded players in Katerina Vankova and Indy de Vroome. However, she topped off a good week by lifting the doubles title with her partner, Anna Shkudun.

ITF $10k Events

There were two teenage winners in the $10k events last week as Viktoriya Tomova won her third title of 2014 in Sousse, while Kristina Schmiedlova, the younger sister of #74 ranked Anna, won her first senior title in Antalya.
Elsewhere, there were also titles for Corinna Dentoni in Casablanca, Olga Saez Larra in Nules and Vojislava Lukic in Sharm El Sheikh.

Juniors

Some of the world's leading junior players converged on Mexico City last week for the Abierto Juvenil Mexicano and both the boys and girls events produced great entertainment. It was America's Michael Mmoh that clinched the boys title after a three set final against Seong Chan Hong, although he had to come from a break down in the deciding set. A number of questionable line calls in the final set had gotten the crowd fully involved on the side of the Korean, but Mmoh kept his cool to clinch his second Grade A title and extend his recent run to 20-1 on both junior and senior tours. He will have been particularly pleased with a straight sets win over top seed Andrey Rublev in the semi-final, while for Hong, this was the best run of his career to date.

In the girl's event, Dalma Galfi extended her winning run to 19 matches after adding her first Grade A title to her back-to-back senior titles in Greece. The 16-year old Hungarian saw off sixth seed, Natalia Vikhlyantseva, in the final having taken out the second seed, Anna Kalinskaya, earlier in the tournament. It was just one step too far for Vikhlyantseva, having beaten US Open champion, Marie Bouzkova, and third seed Fanni Stollar, in consecutive rounds to reach the final. You can watch the entire final below.

Lower Level Tennis Weekly Review

I am not sure how much interest there might be in this, but I thought it would trial it as an idea. The idea is a weekly review of the ITF and junior tennis winners and results in a single article. There is obviously plenty of coverage of the main tour, but very little mention of the lower tours. To begin with, it will only cover women's tennis at ITF and both boys and girls at junior levels. However, if there is interest in this series, I may look to include men's ITF and possibly even Challengers in the future. So, here is the first article in this series.

ITF

ITF $75k Events

Alexandra Dulgheru was the big winner last week, lifting her second title of the year in the $75k event in Dubai. The sixth seeded Romanian dropped just one set all week and saw off Kimiko Date-Krumm 6-3, 6-4 in the final. Vitalia Diatchenko continued her good recent form that has seen her reach the QF in Moscow and win the $125k title in Taipei with a run to the SF in Dubai, which puts her top of the Road to Singapore rankings, albeit at this very early stage. However, she will be hoping that the problems that caused her to take two medical timeouts are nothing serious.

Alexandra Dulgheru won the title in Dubai last week

ITF $50k Events

In Australia, Chinese player, Fangzhou Liu, won her first ever career title with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Japan’s Risa Ozaki in the Bendigo $50k final. The 18-year old, who reached the final in Nan Chang earlier in the year, also recorded good wins against Daria Gavrilova and Misa Eguchi on her run to the title.

ITF $25k Events

Evgeniya Rodina made it back-to-back titles in Sharm El Sheikh as she continues her rise back up the rankings after two years of injury problems. Her 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 victory over second seed, Laura Siegemund, for the second week running, sealed her fifth $25k title of the year and lifted her to #132 in the world. Back-to-back finals for Siegemund also sees the 26-year old German break the top 150 for the first time in her career.

In Mumbai, third seed Marina Melnikova clinched her first title for six years with a straight sets win over Tadeja Majeric in the final. Despite the long wait and two final defeats this year, there appeared to be few nerves for Melnikova as she cruised to a 6-2, 7-6 victory. However, she could easily have been beaten in the SF after Emily Webley-Smith served for the match in the second set and led by a break in the decider. There was little for the home crowd to cheer in the singles, but Ankita Raina was victorious in the doubles with her partner Jia-Jing Lu as they beat top seeds Nicha Lertpiaksinchai and Peangtarn Plipuech in the final.

Ana Vrljic won her first title of 2014 in Minsk after seeing off the challenge of Ekaterina Alexandrova in an epic battle. Both players had opportunities in a tight final set, but it was the Croatian that eventually prevailed 3-6, 6-4, 7-6. One name to keep an eye on may be 16-year old Vera Lapko, who reached the QF in her first ever senior tournament on hard courts.

ITF $10k Events

15-year old Nina Alibalic was the most notable winner in the $10k events last week as she lifted the title in Antalya after a 6-3, 6-0 win over Kristina Schmiedlova to become the 7th youngest ITF champion of 2014. Due to weather delays, she had to win three matches in two days to lift the title.

Elsewhere, there were titles for Amy Bowtell (Helsinki), Natalija Kostic (Heraklion), Silvia Njiric (Casablanca), Olga Saez Larra (Castellon) and Natela Dzalamidze (Sousse).

Juniors

The week’s highest profile junior tournament was the 2014 Seogwipo Asia Oceania International Junior Championships, held in South Korea. It was an event dominated by the top seeds with South Korea’s Yunseong Chung and China’s Shilin Xu lifting the boy’s and girl’s titles respectively as top seeds. Both players were so dominant that neither lost a set all week with Chung defeating Japan’s Naoto Kai 6-1, 7-5 in the final, while Xu made it 17 consecutive junior victories with a 7-6, 6-2 victory over Wushuang Zheng in the final that cemented her place at the top of the junior rankings.

Shilin Xu continued her excellent form at junior level

Elsewhere, sixteenth seed Edan Leshem won the boy’s title in the Grade 2 event in Israel, while the highly rated 15-year old Russian, Evgeniya Levashova, won the girl’s edition, coming from a set down in the final to beat Valeriya Yushchenko 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 in Ra’anana. In Boca Raton, there were Grade 4 titles for Britain’s Californian-based Ryan Storrie in the boy’s and unseeded 14-year old American, Carson Branstine, in the girl’s.

The Curious Case of Maria Sharapova

Until three years ago, Maria Sharapova had never reached the final of the French Open and had just one major clay court title to her name. Since then, she has lifted two French Open titles, three Stuttgart titles, plus titles in both Madrid and Rome. In the same period, she has won just two hard court titles in Indian Wells and Beijing and no grass court titles. For a player that had won all three other Grand Slam titles, plus major titles in Indian Wells, Doha, Cincinnati and Tokyo, it is quite a change.

Sharapova famously described herself as feeling like a ‘cow on ice’ on a clay court, back in 2007 after beating Jill Craybas, but she is arguably now the standout clay-court player on tour. Given her results on the other surfaces, she is almost becoming a clay court specialist. Since her clay court rebirth at the start of 2012, she has compiled a clay court record of 54-4. The only players to have beaten her during this period are Ana Ivanovic and her nemesis, Serena Williams. At the same time, her record on all other surfaces is 58-12. Still not a bad record, but certainly worse than on clay.

In 2014, Sharapova went 31-12 on all surfaces other than clay, winning just one title and losing in the 4^th round of all three Grand Slams. However, on clay, she has compiled an outstanding 19-1 record, winning three titles including the French Open. So, can we look at her statistics and try and see what is going on? We shall focus on 2014 and compare clay against hard courts.

Statistic	Hard	Clay
% Won on 1st Serve	65.3%	69.4%
% Won on 2nd Serve	45.2%	47.3%
% Won on Return	47.6%	49.0%
BP Created/Game	0.91	0.89
BP Conversion Rate	100.6	108.4
DF/Game	0.61	0.42
Aces/Game	0.29	0.27
BP Faced/Game	0.72	0.63
BP Save Rate	97.7	93.0

In general, return is more dominant on clay courts than on hard courts, so we would expect to see a player winning more points on return and fewer points on serve. Sharapova demonstrates the stronger return with 49.0% on clay as compared to 47.6% on hard courts. However, it is her service statistics that are peculiar. She wins 4.1% more points on her first serve on clay than she does on hard courts and 2.1% more on her second serve. Generally, the WTA average is to win 1.8% fewer points on first serve and 0.6% fewer on second serve. Clearly, Sharapova’s serve is working far better on clay than on hard courts for some reason.

Despite winning 1.4% more points on return on clay, this has actually converted to creating fewer break points on clay per game. There are a number of possible reasons for this that we shall investigate later. The first though is the much better conversion rate, suggesting she needs fewer break points to create the break on clay than she does on hard courts.

One of the strangest statistics is the double faults per game. Generally, there is virtually no difference between double faults on hard courts and on clay courts. If anything, there is a fractional increase on hard courts, but nothing compared to Sharapova’s figures. Her 0.42 on clay is a bit higher than the WTA average, but the 0.61 on hard courts is a huge figure. Why it is so much higher is a mystery, but it means that in an average match of around 11 service games, she is serving around 6.7 double faults per match – almost a game and a half worth of points for her opponent. As one might suspect, the lower service point win percentages, combined with the double faults, means that she faces significantly more break points on hard courts than on clay – 0.09 per service game in fact.

Winning points is all well and good, but it is games that are the most important. This is how the earlier figures translate into service and return games won:

Statistic	Hard	Clay
% of Service Games Won	68.6%	72.8%
% of Return Games Won	43.7%	47.3%

As we might expect, Sharapova wins more of both service and return games on clay courts. A difference of 4.2% and 3.6% respectively may sound small, but they are actually quite significant.

We noted that the double faults on hard courts are incredibly high – could this be a major part of Sharapova’s problems on the surface? The figures below can help us to look into this:

Statistic	Hard	Clay
% Non-Ace 1st Serve Points Won	62.7%	67.2%
% Non-DF 2nd Serve Points Won	59.0%	57.8%

Here, we finally see a statistic where her hard court performance is superior. If we exclude double faults, she wins 59.0% of second serve points on hard courts, compared with 57.8% on clay courts. As a comparison, in 2014, Serena Williams won 60.2% of non-DF 2^nd serve points, so Sharapova is actually not far behind at all. The fact is though, once you include the double faults, this plummets down to 45.2%, compared to Serena’s 51.4%.

It is still interesting though that Sharapova is still winning significantly more non-ace first service points on clay than on hard – not a usual situation for a player such as Maria.

Break points are generally the most important points during a match. We noted earlier that, despite winning more points on return on clay, Sharapova actually creates fewer break points on clay. Let us look in more detail at her break point creation. The table below will help to analyse this:

Statistics	Hard	Clay
% of Service Games with BP Faced	42.7%	38.4%
% of Return Games with BP Created	55.6%	57.3%

Here, we can see that Sharapova actually creates break points in more return games on clay than on hard courts. Combined with the break point creation and conversion statistics from earlier, it would seem that Sharapova is struggling to convert break points on hard court, whereas she is more clinical on clay courts for whatever reason. Similarly, she faces break points in far more service games on hard courts than she does on clay. Going back to our average 11 service games, she faces break points in 4.7 service games on hard and 4.2 service games on clay.

So, can we go any further into testing our theory that Sharapova struggles to convert break points on hard courts. The table below looks in more detail:

Statistics	Hard	Clay
% of Service Games Facing BP and Won	26.6%	29.1%
% of Return Games Creating BP and Win	79.1%	82.5%

On hard courts, we can see that Sharapova breaks serve in 79.1% of the service games in which she creates break points, which is 3.4% fewer than on clay. We also see here that, despite having a lower BP save rate on clay, she actually holds serve in 29.1% of those service games where she faces break point on clay compared to 26.6% on hard courts.

To put these figures in context, Serena Williams in 2014 actually holds serve in 38.5% of those service games where she faces break points and breaks serve in 79.4% of return games where she creates break points.

It would seem that there are not too many problems with Sharapova’s ability to convert break points on hard courts, even though it is lower than on clay courts, where she is clearly exceptional. However, for a player that is supposedly known for being so mentally strong, she would be hoping to save break points more regularly.

The biggest concern for Sharapova really must be the double faults on hard courts, followed by the disappointing first serve win percentage. If she is able to cut down the double faults, even just to the level that she serves on clay, which is still a little too high really, this should massively help her. The non-DF second serve points won suggests that she is performing adequately in the rallies, but she just needs to ensure that she does not just donate points on her own serve. From the statistics, it is tough to really explain what she needs to improve on her first serve, but it is a clear area to work on.