After such an entertaining fortnight at Wimbledon – especially that historic and riveting men’s singles final between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer on Sunday – the devoted tennis fan wants more. And the casual fan is susceptible to getting hooked.
So if there’s a tour event in your area, you’re buying tickets, right?
Not in L.A., you’re not.
We are reminded, yet again, that the second largest metropolitan area in the United States no longer hosts a major tennis tour event and hasn’t since 2012, when the ATP tournament at UCLA’s Los Angeles Tennis Center was sold, packed up and shipped off to Bogota, Colombia.
Once, both the men’s and women’s tours played L.A. in late July, sometimes in consecutive weeks, promoted as part of the U.S. Open Series. They were opportunities to capitalize on Wimbledon. And for a while, when the best players were willing to come to the West Coast, they did.
The women’s tour event began in 1971 in Long Beach as one of the stops on the original Virginia Slims tour. It went through a couple of different iterations and a couple of homes before settling at the Manhattan Beach Country Club in 1983 then relocating in 2003 to what is now Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, playing in what was originally built as a tennis stadium but is now used predominantly for boxing. The men’s tournament, which began as the Pacific Southwest Championships in 1927, ultimately became a fixture at the tennis complex built for the 1984 Summer Olympics.
But geography turned out to be an issue and ultimately both events ran into the same problem: In an international sport, the stars who sold the most tickets geared their schedules to the U.S. Open in New York at the end of August. An increasing number decided the long flight to the West Coast didn’t make much sense.
If there were an L.A. Open now, you likely wouldn’t see Federer, Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or any of the other top players. In fact, if not for the loyalty of American players such as Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi, Michael Chang and doubles stars Bob and Mike Bryan during the 2000s, that tournament might have expired long before it actually did.
By that final year, a tournament whose list of champions included greats Bill Tilden, Don Budge, Pancho Gonzales, Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe, Pete Sampras and Agassi was reduced to the 47th ranked player in the world, Benoît Paire of France, as its top seed. (And he didn’t win. No. 2 seed and No. 55 in the world Sam Querrey did.)
Similarly, the women’s tournament in Carson – with a ledger of champions that included world No.1s Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles, Steffi Graf, Kim Clijsters, Lindsay Davenport and Serena Williams – had difficulty attracting top-tier players at the end. The last champion was Flavia Pennetta, six years before winning her only Grand Slam singles title at the 2015 U.S. Open.
In 2004 the top three seeds in Carson were all Americans – Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Davenport in that order, with Davenport beating Serena in the final. In the five years after that, only two Americans were seeded at all: Davenport at No. 4 in 2006 (lost in the second round) and Serena at No. 2 in 2008 (withdrew because of a knee injury).
Nationality, or at least familiarity, shouldn’t matter. But to the casual fan looking for a reason to buy a ticket, it frequently does.
Interestingly, the WTA still has a stop in San Jose, a “premier” event with $876,183 in prize money, and its top-ranked participants this year will be Nos. 7 and 10 in the world rankings, Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina (a Wimbledon semifinalist) and Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka (a first-round loser). It also boasts two former No. 1 players (Victoria Azarenka and Garbiñe Muguruza) and six players who have won singles titles this year, including 17‐year‐old American Amanda Anisimova.
But no Cori Gauff at last look. If I were running a post-Wimbledon tournament, I’d move heaven and earth to get the 15-year-old in as a wild card.
SoCal does have Indian Wells and all of the world’s best players in March, at an event considered the world’s best non-Grand Slam event. But that’s an hour’s drive from the Inland Empire and a little more than two hours from downtown L.A. when traffic is light, which it seldom is.
For the truly devoted there is World Team Tennis and its post-Wimbledon three-week season, with a format that is sort of a bite-sized version of tournament play. The Orange County Breakers have seven home dates at Palisades Tennis Club in Newport Beach beginning July 20, with Azarenka playing for them in the home opener, Genie Bouchard playing July 23 and former USC star Steve Johnson appearing in three matches.
Beyond that, if you were energized or at least intrigued by Federer-Djokovic, what’s your outlet?
The choices seem to come down to (a) hunt for the Tennis Channel or (b) pick up a racket yourself.
jalexander@scng.com
@Jim_Alexander on Twitter
