AELTC Announce Grass Court Tournament Investment in a Build up to Wimbledon Championships

The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC)  announces a series of strategic grass-court season investment to strengthen Wimbledon’s commitment to further improve the grass-court season in the build-up to the Wimbledon Championships.

This strategic move from AELTC includes cooperation with the Lawn Tennis Association for increasing the grass-court season in Britain. AELTC also made a new investment into new grass courts in Stuttgart and Mallorca, and also the support of the existing event in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. In addition, the new calendar also expanded the junior grass-court season to three weeks with the creation of a new event in Nottingham this year in collaboration with the LTA.

The proposed changes to the grass-court season between Roland Garros and Wimbledon Championships will be effective from 2020 onwards. The changes in the calendar will be as follows-

Week 1 

There will not be any changes in the first week of the grass-court season. The International event in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, ATP 250 event in Stuttgart and WTA International event in Nottingham remains unchanged.

Week 2

In the second week, the WTA Premier event in Birmingham is shifted to Berlin. On the other hand, the flagship International event in Mallorca is transferred to Birmingham. There will not be any changes to the ATP 500 events in London and Halle.

Week 3

A new ATP 250 tournament will be organized in Mallorca, which will replace the existing event in Antalya. In addition, the AELTC has also proposed the WTA International event in Istanbul to be transferred to Bad Homburg, which is in the process of seeking WTA Board approval. There will not be any change to the WTA Premier / ATP 250 in Eastbourne.

With these changes, the AELTC will now become the owner of four new or relocated tournaments and it also continues to work closely in support of the existing tournaments.

Philip Brook CBE, AELTC Chairman, said in an interview: “A strong and successful grass court season is absolutely critical to the future of grass-court tennis and thus the future success of The Championships.”

He further added: “Having worked to expand the grass-court season to be a meaningful gap between Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, we are pleased to be making these significant further investments into ensuring that quality grass-court tournaments can be provided at all levels of the professional game for the best interests of the players and the broader tennis family.”