Dubai: The President of the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association), women’s governing body of the game, is hopeful of a favourable decision between Dubai and Doha alternating their status as Premier events on the women’s Tour.
Micky Lawler, who joined the WTA as president at the beginning of 2015, reiterated that decision-makers of the two tournaments will meet next week in an attempt to arrive at a solution that would be mutually beneficial to both venues.
Both the tournaments have a history that is nearly identical after being held for the first time at the turn of the 21st century. However, Doha did not organise its event for two years (2009 and 2010) as they were handed over the year-ending WTA Tour Championship.
Since the past few years, the Dubai and Doha tournaments came to a deal with the WTA to alternate the status of their event between a Premier [draw of 32] and Premier 5 [draw of 64] among the two venues.
After Dubai hosted the Duty Duty Free Women’s open for a 16th time in-a-row as a Premier WTA event, next week’s Qatar Total Open in Doha will be a draw of 64 players.
“The thinking at the moment is that we need to focus on premium, and in order to make premium sustainable, we need to grow it and continue growing it. You can’t have it ‘yes’ one year and no the next even though both tournaments are growing, growing and growing. It’s hard when you are working with commitment schedules that keep on changing each year for each venue. It works if you’ve got no competition and the players just come to the Middle East and compete. But we’ve got a great event in St Petersburg just before Dubai and Doha,” Lawler told Gulf News during her brief stay here.
“But we’ve got to end up with a calendar that is fair to the athletes and the tournament, because otherwise you don’t want St Petersburg, Dubai and Doha to invest major resources for nothing. Then it would be like skating on thin ice because not everybody [among the players] can be everywhere at the same time. We have to make it feasible and work in a good way,” she added.
Lawler insisted that an answer on the tournament status for the two venues could be found as early as next week. “We don’t have all the right answers now and it’s kind of a good problem to have because there is so much of an interest in the WTA from many parts of the world. We just have to calibrate it and balance it and fit it really and make some decisions because obviously Dubai and Doha are long-time great partners and we need to grow this area,” Lawler said.
“That’s a priority for us to look at. Actually, we’ve got meetings coming up next week and we are going to discuss circuit changes and that is a very big priority.”
The two tournaments will be the only ones in the region, at least for the time-being. “There is always interest from the region. In the past, there’s been talk and questions from other countries in the region but nothing has been concrete so far,” she said.
