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Bogota to replace the Los Angeles tournament

5K views 58 replies 28 participants last post by  Lestat 
#1 ·
My apologies if this has been discussed here. I did a forum search but couldn't find any thread about this sale.

http://www.insidetennis.com/2012/11/la-lose-big-tennis-tourney/


L.A.’s great summer tennis happening will be no more.

The Southern California Tennis Association, which owns the tournament
that has been played in L.A. for 85 years, is according to multiple
sources in the final stages of negotiations to sell The Farmers
Classic to investors in Colombia who will move the tournament to
Bogota. The deal reportedly will be worth $1.5 million, and there will
be no tournament in L.A. this year.
The article above was from the 8th. This article from yesterday mentions the owners of the Indian Wells event wanting to buy the tournament but were rebuffed.

Indian Wells CEO Ray Moore told TENNIS.com that his group—which includes owner Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle—“offered to buy the tournament a year ago. They never came back to us. A year ago they gave us two stories, they said they’d sell 49 percent to us and we said Larry Ellison is not going to be a minority partner, and then they told us that they had someone else who was interested and would conform to the 51 to 49 percent, and they never even came back to us. They never said said, ‘Guys we have a buyer from Bogota do you want to preempt it?’ I’m surprised there wasn’t another conversation about it. I was amazed when we heard about the deal. We only heard about it two or three weeks ago.”
I read elsewhere that the tournament hasn't turned a profit in over 4 years and hadn't offered appearance fees for the top players for the past few years. We know how the olympics affected the tournament this year.
 
#2 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

a tennis event in Colombia might be good .But sad seeing so many old events dying :sad: But still tennis is SA is always good .We also need more events in Africa
 
#3 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

:shrug: There are too many US hard court tourneys anyway.
 
#4 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

So California will lose 2 ATP tournaments over the next couple of years, both being replaced by events in South America. San Jose which is the 4th oldest event on the tour (after Wimbledon, the US Open and Canadian Open) will shut down after 2013 with a tournament in Rio de Janeiro taking its place.

USA was a tennis superpower for so long, with so many great players competing for the world no.1 ranking and racking up the slam titles, plus a huge amount of depth in the top 10/20/50. Thus the smaller American tournaments used to attract very strong fields with the best American players, alongside many of the best Australian players and many of the top European players that resided in the US at least on a temporary basis.

However now tennis is dominated so strongly by European players that are not going to enter any of the smaller, non-mandatory US tournaments. Plus with it being clear that it is much better to train and develop primarily on clay instead of hard courts, less of the best or most promising foreign players are relocating to the US these days.

So the big American tournaments that are mandatory and attract all the best players will continue to be fine, but the smaller US tournaments will continue to struggle.
 
#5 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

I do think that here in the U.S. we should suppose clay tennis more. Why the US has such a dislike for clay now I will never know. We used to have more clay court Tournaments. But now they are almost 100% gone! And yet then when a clay court Tournament is in full swing in Europe or elsewhere some Americans stupidly wonder why Americans can't play on clay :confused: Also without a lot of strong top tennis players in the U.S. tennis has lost a lot of popularity in the U.S.
 
#14 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

I do think that here in the U.S. we should suppose clay tennis more. Why the US has such a dislike for clay now I will never know. We used to have more clay court Tournaments. But now they are almost 100% gone! And yet then when a clay court Tournament is in full swing in Europe or elsewhere some Americans stupidly wonder why Americans can't play on clay :confused: Also without a lot of strong top tennis players in the U.S. tennis has lost a lot of popularity in the U.S.
I had the impression that there were more claycourt futures in the US now, especially in Florida near Bollettieri's academy (edit : I see someone had said it before :lol: )

I also had the impression that there were still a few players from other countries improving their game in such academies, as Nishikori did.

I don't have the impression that European academies have developed that much (although Taro Daniel spent most of his time in Spanish futures then I guess he practises in Spain).
 
#6 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

It's mentioned in the 2013 L.A. thread.

I am okay with the event going away if there's another sponsor out there wanting it. It's not like tennis has to be located in US all times, we have tons of them.
 
#12 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

It's mentioned in the 2013 L.A. thread.
yes : many informations there :

http://www.menstennisforums.com/showthread.php?t=212810

notably this one, which Slasher already talked about

It is possible that the Bogota group is simply buying the tournament sanction, and will look for another place on the calendar to hold the event, possibly in February when the other Latin American tournaments take place.
 
#7 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

Even historically many of the great American players like Connors, McEnroe and Evert grew up playing mainly on har-tru/green clay, while the likes of Becker and Edberg grew up playing on red clay as have pretty much all of the great European players.

In fact Agassi in 1992 was the first ever male Wimbledon champion to have grown up playing on hard courts.

I believe that the USTA have switched some challenger/future tournaments and many of its junior events from hard courts to har-tru, which has been a step in the right direction. I've always thought some of the US tournaments such as Miami and Delray Beach should switch to har-tru as well, as that is very common surface in Florida anyway and some other South Eastern states.

It is not the same as red clay, but it would better for the US tennis if young and developing players spent more time on har-tru where they can still work on point construction, longer rallies, movement and sliding etc, instead of hard courts which are rougher on the joints.
 
#8 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

This is great news.

Southern C.A. already has a (much bigger) tournament, and spreading tournaments to other countries is always good in my books.
 
#13 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

This is great news.

Southern C.A. already has a (much bigger) tournament, and spreading tournaments to other countries is always good in my books.
I understand, but as far as the tennis overall economy is concerned, I really think that it's worrying how much its impact declines in the US, because whatever one thinks of the US, in terms of sports economy, they look to be much more effective to generate money than the rest of the world.

However, considering how things are, yes I think the Tour really has to develop in Asia and south America (both for economic reasons and because there are young players emerging from these countries - although there are emerging players in the US as well)
 
#9 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

Who is going to want to play Bogota in the last week of the summer clay season? You're competing with Kitzbuhel that week for the dirtballers, most of whom have come from Hamburg or Gstaad the week before. Meanwhile, the hardcourters are heading to Washington the week after, which is an impractical transition from Bogota altitude.
 
#10 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

Who is going to want to play Bogota in the last week of the summer clay season? You're competing with Kitzbuhel that week for the dirtballers, most of whom have come from Hamburg or Gstaad the week before. Meanwhile, the hardcourters are heading to Washington the week after, which is an impractical transition from Bogota altitude.
L.A. 2013 is in the same week as Gstaad and Umag, while Kitzbuhel is with Washington. If Bogota is to be hosting the tournament, it's not gonna be in 2013 as a direct replacement (2013 is just not gonna have a tournament there anymore), but rather starting with 2014 in a new spot in the year's calendar, when players can be encouraged to make the trip to Bogota. It will probably replace the spot of the current Bogota 125K Challenger.
 
#18 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

The decline of US tennis is really affecting the west coast tournaments. After L.A. and San Jose are gone, Indians Wells will be the only main ATP tournament in the US west of Houston! The rest of the events are solidly east coast: Newport, US Open (NYC), D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Delray Beach. Is Memphis going to be a 250 after the 500 moves to Rio?
 
#24 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

This tournament should move to Vancouver.
 
#27 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

Pretty sad news. I have been attending the L.A. tournament the last 5 years, they had some great exhibition matches including Mac, Sampras, Edberg and Courier. But they were never able to lure the top guys - Murray once, Delpo once, Roddick and that was pretty much it.
 
#31 ·
#35 ·
Re: Farmers Classic tournament at UCLA discontinued

L.A. no more. Moving to Colombia
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/farmers-classic-tournament-ucla-discontinued-004806295--ten.html
In other links i've read that the owner of IW made an offer too .. :confused:
he had made an offer but from the link now it seems it's official that it's the Bogota guy who got it in the end.

I had read in a Swiss article that that guy (who is also responsible for Federer's exho match with Tsonga in Bogota) had tried to get one ATP tournament for very long, but obviously would prefer another date.

I read that the 9600 tickets for the Fed-Tsonga exho had been sold in 3 hours :eek:

In that article I read, they say that SouthAmerica is crazy about tennis like nowhere else, they say that in Argentina even housewives are experts about tennis :lol:

It's normal that tournaments from the USA move there in these conditions, as the Americans seem to be disinterested in tennis.
 
#32 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

Good for the game.
 
#33 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

.. "The quality of the field also declined in recent years. Sam Querrey has won three of the past four tournaments" :sobbing: :tape:
 
#36 ·
Re: Farmers Classic: L.A. To Lose Its Big Tennis Tourney

we need more grass
 
#37 ·
Yes, it's been confirmed Bogota purchased the licence for the LA event and a hardcourt event will be held 15-21 July.
 
#40 ·
Colombia is in the same time zone of the U.S. east coast and you can fly from Bogota to NYC in 5 and a half hours. However, Bogota is 2600 mt above sea level.
 
#41 ·
Bad desicion. Nobody is going to go there at that time of the year. Free week for hard court players. This tournament should had been scheduled for the South American swing.
 
#50 ·
Totally agree. I'd been in Colombia a few months ago and I felt safe on there. I find cities like my home one Buenos Aires and even San Pablo more dangerous than Bogota on these days.
 
#49 ·
:eek: Colombians will love this post :eek:
 
#52 ·
Another factor is that above 1200m or so altitude balls come into play, which doesn't help anyone who plans to play all the following weeks. An alternative is using a type 3 ball (ie the larger category of balls), which have been legal for a decade but aren't used anywhere else.

Going to be amusingly quick up there if they don't, a nice difference from the rest of the tour. I hope Isner plays it once, his second serve would jump like a gazelle.


Presumably a nice + for Bogota in terms of attracting crowds is having Falla/Giraldo, and perhaps Robert Farah and Alejandro Gonzalez in a year or two.
 
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