A fifth Grand Slam in China?

Recently, more and more speculations arise about the "need" of a fifth Grand Slam tournament on the professional tennis circuit. China is named as the logical choice in terms of geography and the capability to organise such an event.

The idea is that they would turn today's China Open into a Grand Slam tournament, thereby giving the Asian continent its own major tennis venue.

Of course, in today's globalised world of sports, there is an increasing tendency to play at as many locations and different venues as possible, giving people all over the world the possibility to enjoy the performances of their favourite athletes live.

China is also a very proud and dynamically developing nation, producing top athletes in all kinds of sports and having the right enthusiasm and enough funds to organise large-scale events with a guaranteed success regarding the number of spectators.

But unfortunately, there are several problems with this idea.

The first problem is called tradition. If you are a real tennis fan, you know that this sport has always been on the conservative side, following traditions that have kept it apart from other sports.

Everything from the scoring system to the resting intervals between games, the apparel of players, the courtside procedures etc. have remained constant or only developed very slowly, over decades or even centuries.

This is also true for Grand Slam events. A Grand Slam would mean nothing without tradition, and if you look at Wimbledon and Roland Garros, you certainly understand why.

The two newer Grand Slams, the US Open and the Australian Open are much more modern, but they have been created in two nations with an incredible long-time support and exercise of tennis, from amateur to professional level. Tennis simply has made its history here.

Even though the Chinese show lots of enthusiasm and passion for the sport, I just don't think a Grand Slam is a realistic idea just yet, some more time would have to pass by to start considering something of this magnitude.

Another problem is to fit it into the already overloaded yearly calendar. Naturally, it would be the dream of corporate sponsors to have another advertising chance for making huge profits, but the players are already being pushed to the limit and four Grand Slams per year, together with the other tournaments, seem more than enough at the moment.

Nevertheless, considering the world-wide popularity of tennis, I think we will see a fifth Grand Slam some time in the future. If China can maintain its positive approach towards the game on one hand and be able to build enough tradtition on the other, it just might be the worthy location of such an event.