Bobby’s Tennis Tour Dream Comes True!

The template for the WSL comes straight from the ATP. Who knew? Bobby knew!

I thought it was common knowledge that the WSL is built on the blueprint of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). The contest/tournament calendar, the ranking system, the contest format and now the exhibition extras – all the same as the ATP.

It makes sense, therefore, that professional surfing’s owner has turned the reigns over to Sophie Goldschmidt with her four years experience as a vice-president at the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association).

It ain’t sexy but it ain’t crazy, if you dig.

Listen. If you were a minnow sport like surfing and looking to a big brother for advice, tennis makes sense. Count the similarities: an individual sport, competitors from a wide variety of nations, tournaments scattered around the world. And tennis has provided household names and reaped fortunes for over half a century.

But Tennis is a rich man’s game. The outfits, the tradition, the silence. That ain’t surf or it at least it wasn’t.

And isn’t tennis really about the four grand slams? Does anyone actually tune in for anything else?

Tennis certainly doesn’t have super-star names who don’t compete but attract fabulous salaries and starry eyes for knocking the ball around the practise court. There’s no Dane Reynolds, no Creed McTaggart, no Craig Anderson. And judging from tennis’s moves trying to shorten and re-jig the format over the past few years, you know they’re having a golf-type issue in trying to appeal to the new generation.

If we look purely from a governing body’s format, what has the WSL borrowed?

1. Tournament Structure – Tennis has the Challenger Tour and the World Tour. Surfing has the Qualification Series and Championship Tour. Both formats allow competitors to earn points through lower events and use these points to qualify for higher-rated events.

2. Tournament Funding – The level of an ATP event (points available), all depends on the prizemoney offered, and as a result the more funded to the governing body. Want to stage the ATP1000 in your crummy little neighbourhood, just cough up the cash and it’s yours. Surfing is the same game. Fork out the money and you can have a QS10,000 at your local break.

3. Hopman Cup / Founders Cup – Did anyone else notice that Sophie’s first big splash, The Founders Cup, takes its colours from the Hopman Cup? International all-team tournament with mixed gender teams? Hopman.

4. Nitto ATP Finals / WSL Mentawaii Finals – The WSL will introduce a finals series to finish of the year in 2019. When this was announced everyone’s eyes went to a NBA/NFL/MLB finals format thinking those jocks were the inspiration. It was actually tennis that has had a finals format for years now. With an Emirates-sponsored ATP Race to London points ladder.

What does the future hold? Tennis has pushed towards indoor single day/night exhibitions to lure millennials in with loud music, flashy lights and a shorter time frame, the Laver Cup for example.

What’s surfing got? Pools, pools, pools.

And another similarity, to quote Billie Jean King, “Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility.”

Oh the similarities are just eerie!