Should Queen's become a masters event?

The grass court season is the shortest of all the different seasons, with wimbledon being the only main tournament. To make Queen's more competitive, should they make it a masters event?

I think we should have a grass court master's event, and maybe even a 500 point grass court event. We could cut down on one of the summer hardcourt master's, namely cincinnati. Although politically I don't think it is do able because of contracts with the promoters and other financial considerations. The players would fight it because they already feel like the schedule is too gruelling, and stripping one of the other master's events is also a difficult political hurdle. But logically speaking they should make the grass court season longer and cut down on the master's events before the US open. Roger's cup should stay, but do we really need cincinnati as a venue. Although that would give London a grandslam, the ATP tour finals, and a master's event. Not to mention the olympics that are going to take place.

Impossible, its not big enough, in seat allocation.

Queens is a ATP World Tour 250 series event. Centre Court holds 6,478 spectators.

Shanghai 1000 masters has a main stadium capacity of 15,000.
Barcelona 500 masters has a centre court with seating capacity of 7,200.

The only thing Queens could do is expand its stand on its main building side, but that would need a massive refurbishment and redevelopment, and Aegon might not think it worthwhile if the improvements won't entice players like Federer to it. Although Nadal said he is going to play this year.

I still think that there should be a grass 1000 pointer and a grass 500 pointer. If not at queen's than at some place else. Eliminate cincinnati and move wimbeldon back a week or two. If people want to see more variety I think that would be the most logical choice. But it won't happen for various reasons. Namely the big dollars from the US and Espn in particular.

Trouble is Queens and Halle clash don't they ?

What a waste of grass

The big problem was that many tournaments changed from grass to either clay or hardcourt over a period of years, starting around the mid 70's onwards. It arranged itself into seasons, but the grass has always been fragmented in a way because of events changing the surface or new events coming into the calendar to further enhance the grass season's cramped style.

Like socal and many others have said, it would need a major overhaul of all events to make it fair, but who really wants to host a masters 1000 event and the costs involved with hosting grass as a surface. It doesn't have the capacity to put on as many events as say a HC can, because the repair times are longer and the upkeep is more expensive.

Also, the major overhaul of events could allow countries like S.Africa to enjoy some of the profits of the ITF's calendar, there could even be a rolling agenda where different countries can host different events over a two year period. But that would need an immense amount of investment and a management overhaul.

Unless International tennis nosedives in the TV ratings, then nowt will change for the foreseeable future.

Talk of a grass Masters 1000 tournament is complete pie in the sky. It will never happen. Why? Because there is only one venue world-wide capable of staging it, and that is Wimbledon.

All the top players go to Queens except Federer who has a long term agreement to play Halle every year.
I don't think attracting them is an issue as the courts at Queens are apparently better than at Wimbledon, and the players all love it there.
There is no room for expansion at Queen's, no space for more courts, bigger locker rooms or any of the other stuff needed for staging larger tournaments.
It's never going to become anything larger than a 250.
There is nowhere else where a fairly large grass tournament can be held.

Absolutely!
Make it a 500 Masters event and Halle 1000. Obviously with no overlap.

Noleisthebest, I think your comment must be tongue-in-cheek.

Halle has two usable courts, the Stadium for the singles and No.2 court for the doubles. With a singles field of 56 it would take them a week to get through the first round alone! It's quite impossible that Halle (which has no scope for expansion) could ever be anything other than a 250 event.

And as others have remarked, a similar situation applies at Queens.

I still think that the ATP should find a way to fit in a grass Master's event. I mean it isn't impossible Michael. Maybe the organizers at Halle could find away to move the event to a new bigger stadium with some financing help from that ATP or sponsors. The biggest reason it doesn't happen is how compressed the grass court events are. Hell why not make Cincy a master's event after wimby. There are a lot of ways around it.

Socal, the Halle stadium is among the biggest and finest in all of Europe, but it can still only stage 4 matches per day. It is the rest of the site that is lacking.

I agree that nothing is impossible, but a grass Masters would surely require the construction of a new multi-court complex and stadium, analogous to the Caja Magica in Madrid.

Well, I think most fans would see this as an improvement over having one big grass court event all year. It would bring some spice and variety to the tour. But I agree that it would take a lot of planning and compromising, two things that the powers at be don't always display a knack for.

"two things that the powers at be don't always display a knack for."

Or the incentive to do it.

Wasn't there a problem that made the grass court season even smaller when a couple of grass events went over to clay ? can't remember who or when, but I'm sure the green stuff had more events on it a few years ago.