ITF Circuit Tours

I promised after the last blog entry that I would illustrate some of the ITF tours that take place around the world at different times of the year.  I will attempt to do as promised, along with the qualification that schedules do change every year and what I describe comes from experiential knowledge and may not be perfectly accurate.  I will also describe the changes that I know and have seen in these tours throughout the last couple of years.

Let’s start with the land down under, Australia!  Every year, usually, players have the option to go and try to pick up what they think might be “easy points” in Australia around September-November, and also around February-March.   I myself partook in a full six tournaments down under a couple of years ago. 

And then there is beautiful Mexico.  This schedule has changed, but it used to be like clockwork.  I got my start on the pro circuit playing the tournaments in the fall in Mexico—typically the qualifying draws are weaker there so if a player without a ranking wants to try and get a ranking, Mexico is the place to go in the fall.  They have about four $25,000 events in a row. 

This last year there was a very disappointing drop in the number of those tournaments, and the ones that still took place were down-sized to $10,000 prize money.  There are also a couple events in Mexico in various cities and states (yes, Mexico has states just like the USA) throughout the months of March-April, these have remained consistent and the prize money is around $25,000.

I can’t forget to include the USA, right?   In the fall, the USA has a hard court season that skips around the country location-wise.  San Francisco, Dallas, Albuquerque, Phoenix and Ashland, KY are just some of the city names where these events are held.  In the months of March-May there is a clay court tour in the Southeastern area of the USA.  These cities include Pelham, AL, Osprey, FL, Charlottesville, VA, and Jackson, MS.  Those are the two most consistent ‘tours’ in the USA throughout the year.

The summer in Europe is littered with tournaments in many different countries, and with many different prize money ranges.  France, Spain, Italy, and Germany are the countries that come to mind with groups of two or more tournaments in a row on a consistent basis during the months from June-July.

The fall is typically when two or more tournaments in the same country take place  in Asia-these tournaments are usually back to back, and take place-in Japan, China and Korea mostly. 

Throughout the year there are some random big tournaments in places like Dubai, or Moscow, or the Ukraine.  I say “random” because there are few tournaments during the year in those countries (I guess Dubai would be the exception there because they host a couple of WTA and ATP tournaments now).

So there we have it, a quick and simple sketch of common ITF tours that go on throughout the year. 

In the next entry I'll share a couple more funny stories!

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