League Notes

Hamburg ATP Event Accepts New Second-Tier Status

The ATP tournament in Hamburg, Germany, agreed last Friday to be a second-tier tournament on the circuit. The event unsuccessfully sued the tour in August over its demotion from the first tier and is appealing the decision. The ATP has eight top-level events next year, and 10 below that, as part of a calendar redesign. It held one of the 10 for Hamburg, with a deadline of last Friday. ATP Corporate Communications Dir Kris Dent confirmed via e-mail that Hamburg had accepted an ATP second-tier event that will occur in mid-July. Hamburg had been played in May previously (Daniel Kaplan, SportsBusiness Journal).

DOUBLES MATCH: SI.com's Jon Wertheim listed USTA Chief Exec of Professional Tennis Arlen Kantarian, who is leaving the organization, under the "Ad-In" section in his weekly column, and noted with ATP Exec Chair & President Etienne de Villiers stepping down at the end of the year, there are "two high-profile vacancies" in tennis (SI.com, 11/3).

IT'S IN THE GAME: In Phoenix, Paola Boivin wrote with the start of the '08-09 NBA season "comes the return of force-fed music bombardment, adult men adorned in inflated sumo suits and an atmosphere that's equal parts electric and vaudeville." Boivin: "Don't give me complete silence. Just a happy medium. ... The T-shirt shooting, orders to cheer and club music are fine as separate entities. It's the merging into one continuous stream of forced unconsciousness that suggests an attempt to mask an inferior product" (AZCENTRAL.com, 11/1).