Tennis Freak

Tennis in its modern form was popularized through the means of open tennis tournaments. Open tennis tournaments were meant to encourage participation from professional and semiprofessional players. It was also aimed to attract the attention of amateur level players. The overall idea was not only to popularize the sport would also to improve the standard of play across the world. Open tennis tournaments during their inception stages were technically meant for players of all kinds-professional, semiprofessional or amateur. In fact, during the formative years of open tennis tournaments, many amateur and semiprofessional players participated and even won some tournaments. The actual purpose of the open tennis tournaments were actually achieved because not only these tournaments attracted wide range participation, it also helped in popularizing the sport in many parts of the world. Open tournaments were also able to attract completely new set of followers thereby increasing the fan base of the sport. All these achievements can actually be considered as secondary because the open tennis tournaments were primarily designed and created by lawn tennis clubs across the world. Their idea was also to popularize their own club in the world, apart from increasing popularity of the game. In many such clubs were actually successful in achieving this-for example Wimbledon, U.S. Open, Australian open, etc, where privately run open tennis tournaments but as time progressed they became a part of the grand slam tournaments. There were many failures too-many open tournaments were forced to discontinue the schedule due to lack of participation or lack of finances. However, the role played by open tennis tournaments in popularizing the sport can never be denied. Open tennis tournaments gradually became selective about the player participation.

This process was speeded up by the formation of ATP in the early 1970s. From then onwards all the open tournaments invited participation based on the seeding system or a series of qualifier rounds will stop this somewhat limited the amateur level participation but professionals and semiprofessionals had their opportunities to qualify for any of the open tournaments by participating in the qualifying rounds and winning them. After the ATP took the overall governance of the sport, the scheduling and commencement of new open tennis tournaments are also co-ordinated and restricted by the organization. This has resulted in a limit on the number of open tennis tournaments in the world and is also restricted the participation amateur players in many of these tournaments.