How women's tennis returned to Queen's in London after more than 50 years

Yahoo

9 hours ago

THE QUEEN'S CLUB, LONDON — A little before 6 p.m. Thursday afternoon, Emma Raducanu stood on the Andy Murray Arena at Queen's Club in west London, soaking up the applause from a packed crowd. She'd just beaten Rebecca Šramková to reach the HSBC Championships quarterfinals, at a time of day that for nearly two decades was basically 'the Andy Murray slot' — primetime for the British tennis television audience.
As the crowd watched on from the stands and on BBC Two back home, it felt like the kind of moment the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) had in mind when it secured a women's event at Queen's for the first time since 1973. Visibility for women's tennis and helping the push towards equality were major drivers of the event returning, and with her run to the last eight, Raducanu, the country's most recent Grand Slam singles champion, acted as the frontwoman for that message.
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The original Queen's Club Championships was a joint men's and women's event from 1890 to 1973, before, with echoes of the modern day, a squeezed schedule led to the women's event being removed from the tournament calendar. The event was held the week before Wimbledon, and with 48 men's players and 64 women's players playing simultaneously, there was little wiggle room for the British weather.
If it rained, matches had to be switched to lightning-quick indoor wooden courts in that instance. So the women's event moved to Eastbourne on the south coast of England, and the men's to Nottingham in the Midlands. The men returned to Queen's in 1977, and the tournament reestablished itself as the premier Wimbledon tune-up.
A male-only tournament for over 50 years, Queen's slowly became synonymous with a particular type of old-fashioned British tennis thinking: Wimbledon was the last Grand Slam to award equal prize money to men and women, and until 2022, former champions were listed on the club's honor boards by their married names. The legendary Chris Evert was down as Mrs. J.M. Lloyd for her 1981 title, as she won that year during her marriage to the British former world No. 23 John Lloyd.
Part of the motivation for the women's event returning to Queen's this year was to shake up some of the long-held assumptions about British tennis. That it is a sport for the middle class, that men are generally given preference, and that change happens at a glacial pace. An extremely expensive members' club in an affluent area of west London remains emblematic of how outsiders perceive British tennis, even more so than Wimbledon. Both are beautiful, old-fashioned venues, but for colored trousers, panama hats and open-necked pink shirts, Queen's has typically been the place to be.
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Its members, gathered by the clubhouse overlooking the main court with Pimm's in hand, are far more prominent than their equivalents at the All England Club, who fade into the background.
'It's kind of what I think a lot of Americans would think of as a (typical) British club,' world No. 8 and Australian Open champion Madison Keys said of Queen's in a news conference Friday.
A small group of Queen's members last year planned legal action against the event, reportedly furious that they weren't consulted about it being hosted at the club. Those tensions are said to have largely been smoothed over, helped by the club taking away a fee for booking courts that had existed even for members previously.
'Originally there was some frustration — you know what Queen's can be like, it can be a bit stuffy,' a member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect professional relationships, said in a phone interview Thursday.
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'But generally now it's been taken pretty well — the changes to the fees have been good, and the extra week hasn't been that disruptive. You can still use the indoor and hard courts during the tournaments.'
There is still exasperation among some members about the reduction over the last few years in guest passes for the tournament. This was down from around 400 to 100 in 2023, and they've remained hard to get. Queen's did not confirm the exact numbers for this year's events, nor whether the possible legal action amounted to anything. Another member made the point meanwhile that the growth of the tournament over the last decade or so has helped transform the facilities at the club.
In any case, these sorts of internal disputes among an extremely privileged group of people are not how those in charge of British tennis want the sport in the UK to be viewed.
The LTA and its tournament director, former world No. 27 Laura Robson, want the women's event to attract a more diverse audience than the men's event typically has. Both events are categorised as 500-level tournaments — the number of ranking points awarded to the winner — just below the 1,000 level, which is the rung underneath the Grand Slams.
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Various fans said that they were visiting Queen's for the first time. One 22-year-old Ukrainian supporter explained Friday that he lived locally and bought a ticket on the day. Another spectator, David, was there with his 12-year-old son Woody, taking advantage of the easier-to-access tickets.
Heather Watson, an experienced British player, felt this was a more diverse crowd than is typical at a tennis event in the UK. 'I came from Birmingham last week, and it felt quite polite, and then this week I felt I really had the crowd behind me,' she said in a news conference after losing in the second round to Elena Rybakina. 'I feel like, because it's in London, and it's a big tournament, maybe you get more of a diverse crowd.'
That crowd remains generally well-heeled and overwhelmingly white. Crew Clothing Company, a very middle-class brand, is one of the main sponsors. But, certainly for the first few days, the event had a slightly different feel to the vibe of the men's event.
'We're encouraging it (more diversity) with the pricing of the tickets, the fact that it's more accessible than the men's,' Robson said Thursday, in an interview in the plush tournament director's office.
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'We've got different categories, and we're encouraging people to even walk up to the door and grab tickets that are available. For the men's event, no one would ever think to do that. There've been a lot of teenagers, a lot of people in their early 20s, which is great. The whole vibe across tennis is to try to get more young viewers and younger audiences. But I think that kind of comes back around to ticket pricing, where you're not going to get someone in their late teens, early 20s being able to afford a £150 ticket.'
The cheapest ticket prices for the men's final are £100, before rising sharply, with women's final tickets starting at £35. There was a similar disparity for the first few days of the events — the cheapest on the Monday and Thursday for the men's was £50 and £70, compared to £20 for both days in the women's. There are four men's matches on those days, compared to three for the women's event, but the pricing disparity is intentional.
'The two events have two very different personalities and it's really felt like that — that everyone's having a good time enjoying themselves in what feels like a relaxed environment,' Robson said. 'And the players pick up on that as well, they love the support, they've loved the fact that there's been great crowds in every day.'
More than 52,000 people will come through the gates in total, around 85 percent of the overall capacity. Only two other women's-only events this year have sold more than that 52,000 figure: August's Canadian Open and the Charleston Open in March and April. The Queen's men's event is a complete sellout as per usual.
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Robson said the site has been designed to be more free-flowing this week, giving fans space to roam and get close to the players on the practice courts. Seeing the best players in the world helps, and although world No. 3 Jessica Pegula and four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka pulled out, eight of the world's top 20 made the trip to west London. The quarterfinals contained six of the world's top 15. The tournament's place in the calendar, straight after the French Open, will always mean some withdrawals.
But Robson wants to make the event as appealing as possible for the players. The excellent facilities in such picturesque surroundings help; the fact that it takes place at an existing club, rather than at a purpose-built venue, gives it a point of difference to many events on the WTA circuit.
Keys said she thinks it's the best 500 she's played at, and others have spoken publicly about how well looked after they've felt at the event. 'It's phenomenal, it's so nice, the grass is great, and it's a good switch-up from where we have been,' Keys said Friday after defeating Diana Shnaider to reach the semifinals.
'It's fun for me to finally come to new places after all these years on tour. I have always heard from all the guys that they love this tournament, it's the best. It's funny, walking into the players' lounge, and you see all the years they won the best 500. I mean, it's absolutely been voted that way for a reason. It's a fantastic tournament. Very happy that the women are here.'
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One WTA executive briefed on tournament categorization, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, said that some within the organisation are viewing Queen's as a '750 or 800' event — ie somewhere between a 500 and a 1,000. There is currently no 1,000 event on grass, but Robson wants Queen's to be in that conversation.
As a former player, Robson wants to create an event that the players love, alongside achieving financial success. Last year, only the Queen's men's event made a profit from the British pre-Wimbledon grass-court events.
The prize money at the women's Queen's event is $1.4 million (£1 m), making it the highest-paying WTA 500 event of its draw size (28) in 2025, and the women's prize money at the Lexus Eastbourne International has gone up to $389,000 — making it the tour's highest-paying WTA 250 event. But both figures remain well below the prize pots for the men's events — a much higher $2.9 million for the men's Queen's event and $863,362 (£637,100) for the men's Eastbourne tournament. Equal prize money will not arrive until 2029.
A downside of the combined event is that it centralizes the sport even more in London, at the expense of other regions. To accommodate the change, the 250 event in Birmingham was moved and downgraded to a 125 event, below the main WTA Tour. The Eastbourne women's tournament went from being a 500 to a 250. Whether all this has any effect on tennis outside of London will become clearer in the next few years.
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Ultimately, the Queen's event provides a platform for British women to have success at one of tennis's grandest and most historic venues — a place where, for years, they had been on the outside looking in. Katie Boulter, who will give up her British No. 1 status to Raducanu Monday, said after exiting the tournament to Shnaider: 'Queen's is everything that I kind of dreamt it would be. I feel like every single day I have stepped out on the court, it's been a great crowd.
'It's been a joy to actually play here, and to get the opportunity is such a privilege. I feel like it's a moment for women's tennis and women's sport in general right now.'
'I think it's huge for tennis in this country,' Watson said in a news conference. 'Having a big tournament here in London, which is the home of British tennis, which is where pretty much all the players live and train, it's huge and very special for us and feels kind of like a reward.'
Some of the week's best moments from a British point of view came on the smaller Court 1, where packed crowds saw Raducanu and Boulter team up for the doubles. They beat Jiang Xinyu and Wu Fang-hsien before going down to Erin Routliffe and Lyudmyla Kichenok.
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Raducanu will rise to No. 35 in Monday's rankings, while Boulter will be No. 39. Then there's Sonay Kartal, who's just inside the world's top 50. British women's tennis is in a solid place, but no one looks like making the jump Jack Draper has over the last year or so to the world's top five.
Almost exactly 24 hours after basking in the adulation of the Queen's crowd, Raducanu was again in the primetime slot and had them roaring her on as she saved three match points against Zheng Qinwen. But the Olympic champion quickly took the fourth, and that was it for home hopes at the event. Earlier on Friday, Tatjana Maria treated the crowd to a masterclass in slice and dice, defeating former Wimbledon winner Rybakina in straight sets.
Maria then knocked out Keys in another stunning performance, to set up a final against Amanda Anisimova that has been more than 50 years in the making.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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