Axed Berlin event a big loss for German tennis

By Karolos Grohmann - Analysis

BERLIN (Reuters) - From the highs of having both men''s and women''s Wimbledon champions 20 years ago to the low this week of seeing a major tournament on home soil scrapped, Germany has gone full circle in the sport.

The women''s German Open in Berlin, a traditional warm-up event for the French Open, was removed from the international calendar on Wednesday after its owners, the Qatari Tennis Federation (QTF), sold the membership back to the tour.

The Berlin event was usually held in May and was a favorite of former world number one Steffi Graf, a nine-times winner there.

Two decades after Boris Becker and Graf won the Wimbledon singles titles, their country, once sprinkled with top class events from north to south including the year-end World Championships throughout the 1990s, is left with no major men''s or women''s event.

The Hamburg tournament, until last year among the most prestigious events of the claycourt season and part of the build-up to the French Open, has now been reduced to "500" status, a level below the Masters Series events.

The tournament will also be moved from its traditional May timeframe to July, when most players are switching their focus to the hardcourt season, making the event even harder to market according to Hamburg organizers.

MAJOR LOSS

"Scrapping the German Open (in Berlin) would be a very big loss for the German tennis scene," German Tennis Federation (DTB) spokesman Oliver Quante told Reuters on Thursday.

"We will make efforts to keep this tournament in Berlin because it would be sad to see this long-standing event die."

Raising investment amid the global financial downturn for an event that German media have said was not a profit-making operation in its latter editions, will be a major challenge.

Quante said the reasons for the cancellation were yet unknown. He also said the DTB was still fighting the downgrading of the Hamburg event.

"We have still not accepted the downgrading of Hamburg. Berlin and Hamburg are two different issues. Germany is still a major market for tennis," he said.

The other remaining events are in Stuttgart, Munich and Halle, a favorite of former world number one Roger Federer, who has won five of the last six editions. Many other top players opt to play at the Queens'' Club in London that week to prepare for Wimbledon.

Quante said while tennis would take a hit with the scrapping of the Berlin event, it would remain popular.

"Tennis is still a popular sport in Germany. Obviously it helps to have major tournaments or a world number one player to promote the sport."  Continued...