The ATP Tour comprises tennis tournaments with Grand Slams,ATP Masters Series, ATP International Series Gold, ATP International Series, ATP Challenger Series, and Future/Sattelite events The ATP tour also oversees the World Team Cup played in Düsseldorf in May and the senior's Blackrock Tour of Champions.

Players and doubles teams with most ranking points (collected during the calendar year) play in the season-ending Tennis Masters Cup, which is run jointly with ITF. The week-long introductory level Futures tournaments are ITF events and they count towards ATP Entry Ranking. The four-week ITF Satellite tournaments were discontinued in 2007. Grand Slam tournaments are overseen by the ITF and they count towards the players' ATP rankings.

2009 changes

ATP tournaments in 2009 will be classified as 1000 series, 500 series, and 250 series with the final calendar yet to be announced.

The 1000 series includes tournaments at Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Rome, Madrid, Toronto/Montreal, Cincinnati, Shanghai, Paris, and the end-of-year event, the Tennis Masters Cup, in London. Hamburg has been replaced by a clay court event at Madrid, which will be a combined men's and women's tournament. From 2011, Rome and Cincinnati will also be combined tournaments. Severe sanctions will be placed on top players skipping the 1000 series events, unless medical proof is presented.[1] Plans to eliminate Monte Carlo as a Masters Series event led to controversy and protests from players as well as organizers. Hamburg and Monte Carlo filed a lawsuit against the ATP and it was decided that Monte Carlo will be a 1000 series event, with more prize money and 1000 ranking points but, but it would no longer be a compulsory tournament for top-ranked players. Hamburg has not settled its suit with the ATP[2].

The 500 series includes tournaments at Rotterdam, Dubai, Acapulco, Memphis, Barcelona, Washington, Beijing, Tokyo, Basel and Valencia.

The ATP & ITF declared that starting 2009 Davis Cup World Group and World Group Playoffs. They will be awarding a total of up to 500 points. Players will accumulate points over the 4 rounds and the playoffs and will be counted as one of a player's four best results from the 500 series. An additional 125 points will be given to the player who wins all 8 live rubbers and wins the Davis Cup

Rankings

ATP publishes weekly rankings of professional players, ATP Entry Ranking, a 52-week rolling ranking and ATP Race, a year to date rankings. The Entry Ranking is used for determining qualification for entry and seeding in all tournaments for both singles and doubles. The Entry Ranking period is the cumulative points earned in the past 52 weeks, except for the Tennis Masters Cup, whose points are dropped following the last ATP event of the year. The player with the most points by season's end is the World Number 1 of the year.

ATP Race is an annual race from season start to season end. Every player starts collecting points from the beginning of the season. At the end of the season, the ATP Race determines which players and teams (first eight for singles and first four for doubles) can compete in the Tennis Masters Cup.

People

Etienne de Villiers is the current Executive Chairman and President of ATP with Mark Young as the CEO of Americas. Andy Anson is the CEO of Europe division while Brad Drewett heads as CEO of the International division.

The ATP Board includes Etienne de Villiers along with tournament representatives, Željko Franulović, Charlie Pasarell and Graham Pearce. It also includes three player representatives with two-year terms, Jacco Eltingh as the European representative, Iggy Jovanovic as the International representative and Perry Rogers as the Americas representative. The player representatives are elected by the ATP Player Council.

The 10-member ATP Player Council delivers advisory decisions to the Board of Directors, which has the power to accept or reject the Council's suggestions. The Council consists of four players who are ranked within top 50 in singles (currently Ivan Ljubicic, James Blake, Thomas Johansson and Olivier Rochus), two players who are ranked between 51 and 100 in singles (Paul Goldstein and Davide Sanguinetti), two top 100 in doubles (Bob Bryan and Kevin Ullyett) and two at-large members (Paradorn Srichaphan and Martin Garcia).

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Tennis_Professionals

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