The ATP announced their tennis calendar for the 2015 season today, which has seen quite a few changes for when the grass court season will be extended by one week.  As a Brit, I am a huge fan of the grass court season and am eager to hear any news about the 2015 schedule. Here is the lowdown on where the women and men will be heading next year along with a few thoughts.

Devonshire Park, Eastbourne

The ATP announced today that 2014 will be the last year that the men play in Eastbourne.  The ATP 250 event will now move to Nottingham and feature a 48-draw event, taking place in the week before Wimbledon.  It was also revealed a few months ago that Nottingham will play host to a new WTA International event too, which will be positioned in the first week of the new grass court season.  Nottingham was home to an ATP event between 1995 and 2008 before moving to Eastbourne.  The Nottingham Tennis Centre has hosted an ATP challenger and a women’s ITF event for the last five years so it is no great surprise to see an upgrade for both events.

I was disappointed to see Eastbourne lose the men’s tournament because I am a big fan of tennis at Devonshire Park; however I can understand the move because they never attracted particularly strong line-ups for the ATP event. On the upside for Eastbourne, the WTA event will now be extended to a 48-player draw.  Eastbourne will go back to being just a WTA event, which it did very successfully for 34 years before the ATP event began in 2009.   I think some of the scheduling, particularly in 2013, was starting to favour the men despite a far superior WTA field so actually, this is a positive move for the WTA tour.

I have been worried about Eastbourne’s future on the tour after Birmingham was given the lucrative middle week of the new grass court season.  I do get the feeling though that the women prefer Eastbourne.  The courts and surroundings are much nicer at Devonshire Park and being the week before Wimbledon hasn’t put players off before so I am hoping it will still be able to attract a strong line-up.  Birmingham’s courts have been poor the past two years and I am interested to see with it’s promotion to Premier status in 2014, how much better the line-up will be compared to 2013.

On the ATP side, Queens and Halle will both be positioned in the middle week and upgraded to ATP 500 status.  The tour has been crying out for at least an ATP 500 event on grass and both Queens and Halle always attract high quality player fields so this bump up makes sense.  Stuttgart will switch from clay to the grass and be joined by s’Hertogenbosch in the first week.

I am intrigued to see if there will be another WTA tournament with Birmingham and Eastbourne currently standing alone in the second and third weeks respectively.  There was talk that Halle may become a joint event although no announcements have been made yet.  Halle would require more courts if it was to host a WTA tournament.  As a Brit, I am very excited about this new grass court season.  Personally, I love grass court tennis and this is a long, overdue move for the tour.  Roll on 2015!

WTA 2015 grass court season schedule

Week 1 (beg. June 8th): Nottingham (International) and s’Hertogenbosch (International)

Week 2 (beg. June 15th): Birmingham (Premier)

Week 3 (beg. June 22nd): Eastbourne (Premier)

ATP 2015 grass court season schedule

Week 1 (beg. June 8th): s’Hertogenbosch (250) and Stuttgart (250)

Week 2 (beg. June 15th): Queens (500) and Halle (500)

Week 3 (beg. June 22nd): Nottingham (250)