Tennis

Tennis, yet another game associated with lot of glamour and juiciest tidbits. UK being its country of origin, Tennis has become popular across the world as it is even being considered as an Olympic sport. The game of tennis involves a racket and a tennis ball which usually is hollow rubber ball covered with felt. Tennis can be played by fit and healthy people across all ages.

Tennis has the credit of being associated with a few prestigious tournaments which are popularly called as Grand Slam tournaments viz the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon - UK, and the US Open. A player or doubles team achieves a Grand Slam when they win all the four tournaments in the same year. In case of winning all four at some time during their career is also referred to as Career Grand Slam. Steffi Graff is the only player who as been awarded with a Grand Slam title in the year 1988 as she won all four titles along with a gold medal in the Summer Olympics 1988

ATP is the Association of Tennis Professionals, 1972 to protect the interests of the male professional tennis players. On the other hand women tennis players have formed a similar association called the Women’s Tennis Association.

ATP has been actively involved in organizing worldwide tennis tour for men called as the ATP Tour which was recently renamed as ATP World Tour.
The ATP Tour comprises Grand Slams, ATP World Tour Masters 1000, ATP World Tour 500 series, ATP World Tour 250 series, ATP Challenger Series, and Futures tournaments. This tour also includes the World Team Cup, played in Düsseldorf in May, and the ATP Champions Tour for seniors.

Rankings of tennis players are defined by ATP as well. ATP has devised an objective merit based method used for determining qualification of entry and seeding in all tournaments. The usual ranking period is for 52 weeks. Tennis players are ranked on basis of their performance

The amount of prize money involved in the open tennis events is simply exceptional. The 2009 Open Tennis tournament announced a prize of
$1.6 million to both the men’s as well as women’s US Open singles champions along with which they can earn an additionally $1 million in bonus prize. To top it all it also offered a new 2010 Lexus IS Convertible to both the winners of the US Open.

Best performing tennis players of the world have been declared by the ITF - International Tennis Federation on yearly basis since 1979. The tennis players are rated on their performance throughout the year including
the ATP World Tour Finals, the Davis Cup, weekly tour event and also the Grand Slam tournaments. Hence the tennis players which have been mentioned here include Björn Borg, Jimmy Connors, 1983 John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg, Jim Courier, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Gustavo Kuerten, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick and Roger Federer.

On the other hand, women tennis players which have been acclaimed as world tennis champions include Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, Jennifer Capriati, Serena Williams, Justine Henin, Anastasia Myskina, Kim Clijsters, Justine Henin, and Jelena Jankovic