At the venue of Boris Becker’s first tournament victory on the ATP Tour, women will soon be swinging the tennis racket again. German idol Boris Becker won his first professional title in the suburb of the Thames metropolis in 1985
At the venue of Boris Becker’s first tournament victory on the ATP Tour, women will soon be swinging the tennis racket again. According to the British Tennis Association, a WTA tournament will be held on the lawn of London’s Queen’s Club in 2025 for the first time in 52 years in preparation for Wimbledon. The planned date is the first week after the French Open on the clay in Paris, followed immediately by the traditional ATP men’s event at the same venue.
The ATP had previously been very skeptical about the plans for the WTA project. The players’ association fears disadvantages for its professionals in the run-up to Wimbledon because the grass could be damaged too much by the women’s tournament taking place beforehand and therefore no longer meet higher standards.
Becker won his first title as a professional at Queen’s
While the WTA event will initially be held next year as a test run, the responsible association director Chris Pollard believes in a longer-term future for both competitions at Queen’s: “Wimbledon has already shown that grass can withstand two weeks of tennis. We also have a lot of independent research to show that the men’s matches will not be adversely affected in any way by the previous women’s tournament.”
Becker won his first professional title at Queen’s in June 1985 as a largely unknown teenager. A few weeks later, the then 17-year-old from Leimen caused one of the biggest sensations in tennis history and also in German sporting history with his triumph at the Grand Slam tournament in Wimbledon. Becker went on to win three more times in the London suburb until 1996
The inclusion of Queen’s in the tournament calendar as a WTA 500 event is also causing movement at the other WTA tournaments on the island. After 42 years, Birmingham will now only host a second-tier Challenger tournament, and the Wimbledon dress rehearsal for women and men in Eastbourne will only belong to the lowest tournament category.
