Tennis: Masters Cup to herald new era of co-operation
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Your support makes all the difference.GREG RUSEDSKI gained a place in the sports history books yesterday as the last man to win the Compaq Grand Slam Cup. The $1.3m (pounds 820,000) prize Rusedski received at Munich in September marks the end of the richest event in tennis. The Grand Slam Cup is to be merged with the ATP Tour Championship next year as the Tennis Masters Cup.
The title is nostalgic. The year-end men's indoor championship was known as the Masters before the Association of Tennis Professionals broke away from the Men's International Professional Tennis Council in 1989, shedding the influence of the International Tennis Federation and running its own tour.
At that point, Axel Mayer-Wolden, a German entrepreneur, approached the ITF with the means to introduce the Grand Slam Cup, a men's indoor event for players who achieved the best results in the four Grand Slam championships of Australia, France, Wimbledon and the United States.
The total prize fund for a 16-man field was a staggering $6m (pounds 3.8m), with $2m initially going to the winner. In addition, $2m was donated annually for the development of the sport worldwide. A women's Grand Slam Cup was introduced in 1998, and this may be continued.
Bitterly opposed by the ATP Tour as a divisive "exhibition" event, the Grand Slam Cup none the less put a total of $60m in the players' bank accounts and also raised $20m for the grass roots of the sport.
The co-owned $3.7m Tennis Masters Cup, which will donate $1.5m to the Grand Slam development fund, was heralded yesterday as a sign of a "new level of co-operation... among all parties in several areas". These include a co-ordinated approach to the consideration of changes to the Rules of Tennis governed by the ITF; a commitment to satisfy the independent scheduling needs of the Grand Slams, the Davis Cup and the ATP Tour; and the establishment of a decision-making body for the Tennis Masters Cup.
As part of a $1.2bn (pounds 76m) marketing partnership between the ATP Tour and ISL Worldwide, the nine premier ATP Tour events will be known as the Tennis Masters Series, and the new calendar-year ranking points system will be launched in January as ATP Champions Race 2000. This will link the four Grand Slams, the Tennis Masters Series, and 60 other tournaments on the Tour, to be called the International Series.
Tim Phillips was confirmed as the Wimbledon chairman at last night's annual meeting. Phillips, 57, British Airways' head of community relations, succeeds John Curry, who retired after 10 years.
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