It's a no-go for the idea of split draws in Montreal and Toronto for the Rogers Cup events in 2011, the year they will start being held simultaneously in both cities.
Last summer, Tennis Canada, which lost its women's two-weeks-before-the-U.S. Open schedule slot because Cincinnati has it for a new top-tier combined men's and women's tournament starting next year, was brainstorming about ways to use its three-weeks-before-the-U.S. Open date for its own top-tier Rogers Cups.
One idea was to stage one half of the draws for the men's and women's events in each city, with a finalist from each tournament 'crossing-over' to the other city for the championship match.
It was a really innovative concept, which would have allowed Montreal and Toronto to showcase the men and the women each year in much the same way as the current tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami, but it has been quashed by the qualms of a few of the top players.
The reticence of key players concerning the difficulties facing the travelling finalist in terms of adapting to different playing conditions and surroundings in a new city, as well as about the potential for transportation foul-ups even if they were flying by private jet, led Tennis Canada officials to drop the idea, at least for 2011.
Eugene Lapierre, Tennis Canada's tournament director in Montreal, sat in his office earlier this week and explained that his main worry was that a top player's dislike of the travelling finalist arrangement could lead to him or her taking a pass on the tournament. "We wouldn't want to risk a situation where a player decides to skip our tournament just because he (or she) doesn't like the idea of changing cities," he said.
Some players are extremely sensitive about adjusting to new conditions - surface, stadium, habitat and weather - and, for them, travelling to another city affects the integrity of the tournament. They think it's like some kind of gimmick.
So, an intriguing concept is caput. That's unfortunate because Tennis Canada has had to give up a whole week on the calendar because of the new mixed event in Cincinnati. Splitting the draws between the two cities was one way to make the best of a bad situation.
It would have been a bold, revolutionary move for tennis officials. Lapierre still loves to imagine the reception the travelling finalist would have received when he or she arrived in a new city and in a new stadium in front of a new crowd.
There would also have been the potential for huge fanfare associated with doing the draws to determine which players went to which city. The idea was to do them either just before or after Wimbledon, giving the players and officials time to make arrangements for their respective cities.
Lapierre revealed that it looks as if Montreal's weekday evening sessions in 2011 will start much earlier at 5:30 p.m. That will allow for extra exposure (and two singles matches each night) over the supper hour as the two Rogers Cups are combined into a single 'virtual tournament' for the purposes of national and international television coverage. To that end, the sponsor signage on the back screens at both events will be identical.
If creative thinkers like Lapierre and others have been disappointed by their inability to shake up the tennis world order with their new and edgy concept, at least he can take consolation in the fact that tickets sales for the 2010 women's Rogers Cup in Montreal are slightly ahead of last year's men's event, which went over the 200,000 mark for the first time.