India has, for long, suffered a dearth of international tennis tournaments. While Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata have hosted short-lived tournaments, only the Chennai Open has survived the test of time by being a permanent fixture on the Tour calendar for close to two decades.
It is this void that the Champions Tennis League (CTL) and the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL), with its battalion of international stars like Roger Federer and Venus Williams, seek to fill. The first of these tournaments, the CTL, starts on Monday at New Delhi.
Exposure for Indian players“It (CTL) gives an opportunity for our Davis Cup players to play alongside international stars,” says former India great and CTL promoter Vijay Amritraj in a chat with The Hindu .
“One can see how these stars think, strategise and practice. It will also help inspire the next set of youngsters: those below 20,” says Amritraj.
“For example, Ramkumar Ramanathan will have Thomas Enqvist as his captain, and will play doubles with Feliciano Lopez, which is great!”
The tournament will feature an alternative scoring system: single-set matches with no-ad games and a nine-point tie-break at 5-5. However Amritraj believes the fans will not have much trouble adjusting.
“The basics remain the same,” he says. “It’s still two serves.
“The courts, the balls, the equipment are the same. The no-ad scoring is to cut short the game. The tie-breaker is not much different either.
“Time constraint and TV scheduling has much to do with these. It’s like the difference between Tests and ODIs.”
With the ITPL scheduled immediately after, comparisons between the two seem inevitable. But Amritraj says his tournament belongs “entirely to India.”
“It has international stars in action only in India. Also, the players who are in the team are committed to play in all matches. In the ITPL, Roger Federer is playing only in Delhi but not in Singapore. I don’t know how it works.
“For a team you need to play everywhere. Here, Venus Williams will play for Bangalore everywhere. It builds a real team environment, makes it really competitive and more interesting for the public to follow.”
