A few years ago, in what seemed like a brilliant stroke of genius, Arlan Kantarian and the USTA invested in several U.S. summer tournaments leading up to the U.S. Open and created the "U.S. Open Series." Hailed as something to bring attention and excitement to the summer U.S. tennis tour culminating with the U.S. Open, it was meant to build anticipation of great tennis in New York and to attract the biggest names to play in these smaller tournaments.
It seemed to work for a couple of years. The big prize for participating in the series was that the winner of the U.S. Open could potentially double their prize money. In the series' existence, only twice has that happened. Kim Clijsters walked away in 2005 with a $2.2M dollar check and Roger Federer captured a record $2.4M payout last year. Truthfully, even though it was a big monetary win, all the headlines read were that they won a record payout. Not why the payout was so large.
It's 2008. As far as I can tell, just about nobody even knows that the U.S. Open series is ongoing. Yes, ESPN has been providing some tennis coverage. There are commercials here and there. But the television coverage isn't the best. The WTA events will not even be broadcast from the beginning of August until the Pilot Pen.
If you look at the draws for these tournaments in the series, most of the top-10 players are not in the draws or the draws are extremely sparse of top players. With the Olympics just a few days away, many of the top players are taking a rest and gearing for Beijing. I saw just yesterday that Serena Williams is hurt, but will take some time and will be playing for gold in China. Last I looked, the Olympics doesn't get you U.S. Open Series points, so that means that for the most part, the top players, the ones most likely to do well at the Open, will not be gaining series points.
Basically, at least in 2008, the U.S. Open series is irrelevant. Just look at the leaders at this point:
For the men (in order): Giles Simon, Dmitry Tursunov, James Blake, Sam Querrey, Paul Capdeville, Tommy Haas, Yen-Hsun Lu, and Bobby Reynolds.
For the women: Aleksandra Wozniak, Marion Bartoli, Ai Sugiyama, Serena Williams, Anna Chakvetadze, Patty Schnyder, and Samantha Stosur.
While Serena probably has the best shot of winning the U.S. Open of all the series leaders, with her injury and the fact she won't be earning points while at the Olympics she won't win the series. You'd be hard-pressed to tell anyone that Giles Simon or Aleksandra Wozniak will be holding trophies in September, so even if they win the U.S. Open series, who cares?
Tennis as a professional sport just saw a great Wimbledon final. You can't really blame problems with the television coverage, as NBC really did keep going back to the Rafael Nadal/Roger Federer final and the weather breaks were long and hard to predict. I missed the third set completely just driving a few miles away to join a mate to see the rest possibly in HD. I had a deadline to meet for another project, so I almost missed the final games of the final set because it looked like there would be a postponement till Monday.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the only tennis tournaments that truly matter to the sports watching public at large are the big four. The Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. If there continue to be great rivalries and great matches like we saw this year at the All England Club, people and reporters will flock in record numbers to the U.S. Open at the end of August. Let's hope that Roger Federer picks himself up after a tough grass court loss, let's hope Raphael Nadal is healthy after killing himself to win Olympic gold, let's hope Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, and the Williams sisters survive China and all come into the Open firing on all cylinders.
I'm turning my tennis TV off now. I'll turn it back on around the 25th of August. You can e-mail me the names of the U.S. Open series winners.
July 26, 2008
Fred Scaboda:
Every week isn’t Wimbledon. The US Open Series is an accurate reflection of the week-to-week tennis schedule, where 2nd and 3rd tier events are the norm. What makes the slams, and tier one events so special is that they are RARE. Of course you’re not going to see Venus, Roger, Maria, James, Andy and Rafa every week on the USOS. Not only do tennis players travel more than any other athletes, they also compete, nearly year-round, so they have to pick and choose which events to enter carefully. Throw the Olympics into the picture and you have an admittedly, but also understandably small crop of players on the Series this year. The masterstroke of the USOS is in providing an umbrella under which all the significant US tennis tournaments can prosper. It may not seem like it from the outside, but the structure of the USOS has increased tv viewership, ticket sales and corporate sponsorship for each of the tournaments that has joined on; dramatically increased in most cases. For the mainstream tennis fan, who wants to see Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova every week, the USOS may be a bit disappointing, but it does provide a unique opportunity to see players who usually don’t get loads of media coverage. That’s really the target demographic for the USOS; die-hard tennis fans who know and want to see players like Robbie Ginepri, Jon Isner and the like. In terms of coverage, it’s pretty easy to find. It’s on ESPN2 just about every night, with finals every Sunday (also on the deuce), Tennis Channel also provides coverage of the early rounds.