The Curious Case of the German Tennis Championships

It is May of 2008. The setting is Hamburg, Germany. The players are Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. They are locked in a tough three-setter, with Roland Garros looming just over a week away and the match having serious implications heading into the tournament. The next year, the final takes place in July and is between Paul-Henry Mathieu and Nikolay Davydenko. The number one seed: Gilles Simon. Fast-forward two years, and the champion, is in fact, Simon. He defeated Nicolas Almagro in the final. The number one seed: Gael Monfils. What happened to the tournament? The case of the German Tennis Championships is a very interesting one, and after the jump we'll take a look at what happened and what it says about the ATP.


In 2008, the Association of Tennis Professionals, the ATP, revamped their entire schedule. With the changes, Hamburg was demoted from being a "1000" level, or former Masters Series, to being a 500 level event. Furthermore, the ATP moved the Madrid Tournament, which had been on hard courts and played in October, to May and to an outdoor red clay surface. The ATP also moved Hamburg from its customary pre-French Open spot to it's current place in July. The organizers then filed a lawsuit against the ATP, trying to keep the tournament where it was and keeping its prestige along with that. The lawsuit was rejected, and the tournament has now become a brief respite for European players before making the treacherous trek over to North America for the hard court season. This year's edition of the tournament did not lack many big names. Gael Monfils, Gilles Simon, Jurgen Melzer, Nicolas Almagro, Mikhail Youzhny, and Fernando Verdasco, all top 30 players, were there, and, generally, it was high quality tennis.

So why does the tournament feel like an afterthought, a fun quirky event that tennis fanatics around the world enjoy but seems to be irrelevant to the grand scheme of the tennis calender? The answer is, of course, proves the adage that timing is everything. The four major, and the World Tour Finals to some degree, are the goal of every player. They are by far the biggest events on the calender, and every tournament's significance is tied to its relation to a major, with the exception of Indian Wells and Miami, which belong in a separate category due to having a 96 player draw. We have the minor lead up to Australia, the European clay court season leading to Roland Garros, the very quick grass court tune-ups to Wimbledon, the US Open Series as the lead in to the US Open, and, to a minor level, Paris and Shanghai as warm-ups to the ATP World Tour Finals. While there are tons of tournaments that fall outside these categories, and great tennis is surely played there, the significance is lost. This means that a tournament won't attract as much attention or as may top players, and when the top players do appear, it is only because they want extra match play and to collect a few ranking points. This is the case of the German Tennis Championships. The players were there, the court was pristine, the history of the tournament was felt, but the energy, the excitement and the anticipation simply were not there.