[BodyElectric.]

Eastbourne and Birmingham are the only proper warm up Grass tourneys before Wimbledon. While AO, FO and USO have a load of Hard and Clay tourneys players can play to warm up.

WTA needs to extend the grass season and buy more locations. It's actually pathetic how short the whole grass season is. You have loads of Clay and h
Hard court tourneys so there should be more Grass.

[KatjaS]

Grass tournaments are common only in Europe, a region the WTA leadership is not particularly interested in. That said, it will be extended by 1 week in 2014 because Wimbledon is pushing for it.

[Drimal]

I would like to see one more week of grass tournaments.

Weren't there plans for a grass tournament in Egypt before this season?

[Wert.]

Maybe a tournament in Dublin.

[Jimmie48]

For some years there have been talks of turning the ATP tournament in Halle into a combined event but it would require substantial extension of the tournament facilities.

[Anthony.]

Lord, welcome to the ten year old conversation.

Grass is: expensive and hard to maintain compared to clay and hardcourt.
The schedule has zero time for it because Wimbledon and the French Open like where they are in the calendar, and will refuse to move unless they choose to do so on their own.

[SilverPersian]

(Also Rosmalen)

[Chrissie-fan]

Originally Posted by LethalLaura

Eastbourne and Birmingham are the only proper warm up Grass tourneys before Wimbledon. While AO, FO and USO have a load of Hard and Clay tourneys players can play to warm up.

WTA needs to extend the grass season and buy more locations. It's actually pathetic how short the whole grass season is. You have loads of Clay and h
Hard court tourneys so there should be more Grass.

I agree in principle, but the way the tour currently is structured there is no room to extend the grass season, except for by that one week starting from 2014 that KatjaS has mentionned. To have five or six weeks of grass tennis that would besides Wimbledon also include a premier mandatory or premier5 plus a masters 1000 event on the mens side would be a good thing as far as I'm concerned, but it's impossible since the FO and Wimbledon are only seperated by a couple of weeks.

[stromatolite]

I think it would be in the interest of the game to extend both the grass and clay seasons, but I can't see it happening any time soon.

If anything, grass and clay will struggle to maintain the slender toehold they now have, because the predominance of HC events means that there are hardly any players left who really know how to play on those surfaces. Since nobody much wants to see a bunch of players embarrassing themselves on surfaces they know nothing about, most clay and grass courts are already glorified HCs anyway.

[BodyElectric.]

Originally Posted by Anthony.

Lord, welcome to the ten year old conversation.

Grass is: expensive and hard to maintain compared to clay and hardcourt.
The schedule has zero time for it because Wimbledon and the French Open like where they are in the calendar, and will refuse to move unless they choose to do so on their own.

Why the over-exaggeration?

Apart from that, i understand there's scheduling issues but WTA can cut the LONG Clay season short to make way for Grass.

The clay season starts from around April till the end of May (FO). They can be a reduction in tournaments.

Originally Posted by Chrissie-fan

I agree in principle, but the way the tour currently is structured there is no room to extend the grass season, except for by that one week starting from 2014 that KatjaS has mentionned. To have five or six weeks of grass tennis that would besides Wimbledon also include a premier mandatory or premier5 plus a masters 1000 event on the mens side would be a good thing as far as I'm concerned, but it's impossible since the FO and Wimbledon are only seperated by a couple of weeks.

Yes Chrissie, i understand that. But as i mentioned above if there was a reduction of the clay season it could work.
If Wimbledon was moved to July... and WTA got rid of Palmero, Stanford, Carlsbad.

[stromatolite]

The clay season isn't long, it's short, just not as short as the grass season. Emasculating the already too short clay season to make way for more grass isn't a solution. In the unlikely event that anything is done to extend the grass season, it should be by reducing the ridiculous number of HC events.

[Wert.]

Originally Posted by LethalLaura

Yes Chrissie, i understand that.

[matthias]

wimbledon will be moved back 1 week soon
so we get 1 week more

[Viennalover]

AGREE.

If # of grass court's not enough, adding super-fast hard courts for worm up tourney would do.
simply french and Wimbledon are too close and there should be at least a full month between them.
(now it's only 2 weeks... 3 weeks from 2014 is not enough)

what about bringing Ebook Copenhagen right after French.
it's pretty odd to have indoor tournaments in clay season anyway.
or 75k Nottingham to be WTA125 and place it after French.

[SilverPersian]

^Yeah, and put Madrid after the French Open as a warm up event for Wimbledon as well.