!Halep by Pete Bodo
The headline is telling: Halep, Arn advance in Fez; Pervak upsets Kerber.
I wouldn't be surprised if even a fairly loyal tennis fan, reading that, would be hard pressed to understand just what that hed might refer to (could it be sports? tennis, maybe?), much less recognize the names of those players. But let's tip our hats to the nation of Morocco, from which that bulletin emanates. The entire continent of Africa hosts just three WTA or ATP events, of which two are in Morocco (the third is the SA Open, in Johannesburg, South Africa). With both a men's and women's outdoor clay event in Morocco, Northern Africa is the beachhead for the tennis invasion launched from South Beach in Miami at the end of the Sony Ericsson Open.
The men's ATP event in Morocco, The Grand Prix Hassan II, took place in Casablanca. The winner was Pablo Andujar. The WTA equivalent is the ongoing Grand Prix de SAR La Princesse Lalla Meryem, in the exotically appealing city of Fes. Don't you just want revise your Netflix queue, bumping up The Sheltering Sky, or Casablanca?
The challenge of staging an event like a typical pro tennis tournament in a nation so unlike, say, Germany (where the other, larger WTA event this week is going on in Stuttgart) must be formidable, so it's probably a good thing that the economics bit is irrelevant: the Casablanca event is entirely funded by King Mohammed VI. And given that Princess Lalla Meryem is the sister of King Mohammed, it's a safe assumption that administrators of the WTA event won't have any trouble cutting the prize-money checks at the end of this week, either.
The largesse of King Mohammed is noteworthy, even if it seems quaint to some and perhaps even off-putting to those who dislike the idea of monarchy and authoritarian rule, or are discouraged by the general state of society in Morocco. But unlike the events in Dubai or Doha, I don't at all sense that there's a big ulterior motive or publicity push associated with the Moroccan events. I'm not sure anyone is trying to build and sell indoor, air-conditioned ski mountains to rich Brits and Germans in Casablanca, even though King Mohammed could easily buy himself a Roger Federer or Caroline Wozniacki if that's what he really wanted to do. I imagine he's content to remain under the radar with his ATP 250 and WTA International Series events. One day, I'll try to find out just why—or even if—King Mohammed an Princess Lalla are big tennis fans.
What I like most about these Moroccan events is that on two occasions the Casablanca tournament was actually won by a Moroccan: In 1997, Hicham Arazi took the Casablanca title, and in 2002, the winner was Younes El Aynaoui. That's a little bit like a Mardy Fish winning the U.S. Open, or an Amelie Maures—whoops—Alize Cornet bagging the French Open title. Those were seriously good efforts by Arazi and El Aynaoui, and it reminds me how much I miss those two guys.
The Moroccan events attract similar fields, the top seeds being Top 30-type players. The men's top seeds this year were Albert Montanes and Marcos Baghdatis, respectively, and Gilles Simon was the most dangerous floater. The headliner among the women is No. 24 Aravane Rezai, and can anyone think of a more beatable top seed? The next highest-ranked seed, Yaroslava Shvedova, is No. 46. Basically, that means it's anyone's tournament to win, maybe even Dinara Safina's. On second thought...
The similarity in the prestige of the two Moroccan events is welcome, and it's just another sign of the inroads the WTA has made to creating what the men already have—a viable spring Euroclay tour. The WTA events still don't have quite the same magnum power as the men, partly because one of the biggest fixtures on the schedule takes place in the U.S., in Charleston, on green Har-Tru instead of continental red clay. It's also been because stand-alone women's tennis in general has always been a tougher sell in Europe.
The concept of a women-only tour was a patently American concept. The rebellion that led to the creation of the original, all-women's Virginia Slims tour was spawned by Billie Jean King, who was angered by the gross disparity in the prize money offered to men and women at the Italian Open of 1970 (the ratio was 7:1 in favor of the men). The financing for the original all-women's Virginia Slims tour was entirely American, and six of the eight women who originally threw in with the tour (in defiance of the USTA and Tennis Australian, which had far-reaching power over the women) were from the U.S. (the other two were Australians Kerry Melville Reid and Judy Tegart Dalton). But women players from all over the world embraced the idea, even if ticket buyers often did not.
While Europe hosted a number of successful all-women's events (starting with gold-standard Virginia Slims events that eventually disappeared or were taken over by successive tour sponsors), they formed nothing like the established tour the men already had on the road to Roland Garros. And as the 70s faded out and the once sturdy Virginia Slims infrastructure began to crumble, women's events in Europe found it tougher and tougher to attract an audience. Ironically, the women are enjoying a renaissance of sorts thanks to the return of the "combined" event—or any of the variations on the idea. This year, a slight shift in the calendar enabled both the Madrid and Rome (Italian Open) tournaments—the two most important on the road to the French Open—to be truly combined (instead of back-to-back) a la the Grand Slam events.
All other considerations aside, the women now have a viable Roland Garros Series going, despite the awkward Charleston start and the fact that the main WTA event this week is indoors. The headlines from Fes belong to Simona Halep and Greta Arn, but the ones coming out of Stuttgart in the coming days are likely to be made by luminaries like world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki, No. 3 Vera Zvonareva, Francesca Schiavone and Victoria Azarenka. And it only gets better for the WTA, with Barcelona and Estoril coming up next, and then the two big combined events in Madrid and Rome leading up to the small-tournament week before the start of Roland Garros. Henceforth, everything will be on outdoor red clay, as it should be.