With an aim to provide young tennis players a "developmental pathway", the Asian Tennis Federation (ATF) today launched an exclusive Asian Tennis Tour (ATT) for the players in the Asian region.
The decision to launch the initiative was taken at the ATF Board of Directors meeting here on Thursday.
Only the Asian players will be allowed to compete in the ATT events and incentive would be to get wild cards for various ITF Futures and ATP Challenger events apart from some prize money.
Another incentive is that top-five players on the ATT will be given a chance to travel with the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) teams.
"The Asian tennis tour has been created with the specific objective of enhancing opportunities for the young Asian tennis players to fill up the void between the national and international professional circuits. This transition void has been traditionally resulting in many of these players dropping off the game due to lack of chances of making a decent living and advancement in their professional careers," an ATF press release stated.
The ATT will begin with an event in New Delhi from April 18. The players will not be able to earn any ranking points from the tournaments but they can earn money.
The tournaments will be in two categories. In the first category, the event prize money would be USD 5000 plus USD 2000 as travel/support allowance.
In the second category, the event prize money purse would be USD 7500 apart from USD 2000 as travel/support allowance.
It was not clear what is the prize money for the winner and runner-up.
A similar Tour will be launched for women in 2018.
ATF President Anil Khanna said they would "request Grand Slams and the ATP Tour event for wild cards in their qualifying events to help boost the young Asian tennis players".
ATF Chairman Nasser Ghanim Al Khelaifi said "it is very essential that these players are supported during this very challenging beginning phase of their careers, where earning a break-even is as important as gaining competitive exposure and to see oneself break into the international ranking chart. All this will in turn help develop the talent pool form our region."
The ATF has also decided not to provide live scoring at these developmental events or sell its data, keeping in mind the recent fixing allegations.
