The WTA Istanbul Cup will be a success despite Serena Williams’s announcement that she will skip the tournament, according to the top figure in Turkish tennis.
The tournament, the first round of which starts on Monday, has suffered a major setback since the top-ranked woman player announced her decision to withdraw due to a foot injury caused by stepping on broken glass last week.
Speaking about the sixth edition of the hard-court tournament, Ayda Uluç, the chairwoman of the Turkish Tennis Federation, or TTF, said it was a disappointment but added that the event would still survive without the American star.
“She was always our first option because we were thinking, ‘If we are bringing a player, why not bring the best?’” she said at the head office of the TTF in the Karaköy neighborhood of Istanbul. “We were set to welcome her, but then this unfortunate accident happened.”
Despite the disappointment for Turkish tennis fans, who would have the opportunity to see a top-ranked player in the country for the first time, Uluç refuses to remain downcast by the news.
“We are upset with the news but in sports, you always keep such possibilities in mind. We were sad but not shocked,” said Uluç.
“We first contacted Kim Clijsters [of Belgium] to replace Serena, but as interested as she was, she said no because she was going to the United States for the U.S. Open. We then thought about Nadia Petrova and Flavia Pennetta, but at the end of the day, decided that they would not be as catchy as Serena.”
Leaving Serena Williams’s withdrawal aside, the WTA Istanbul Cup, one of the last two hard-court tournaments in Europe before the season-ending Grand Slam, still has a bill that is worth watching.
French Open winner Francesca Schiavone, Wimbledon semifinalists Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova and Czech Petra Kvitova, as well as Ansastasia Palyuchenkova of Russia, Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova, German Andrea Petkovic and Swiss veteran Patty Schnyder are on the bill, while Russian player Vera Dushevina will be at the ENKA Arena of Istanbul to defend her title.
“I believe that the line-up is really good, even without Serena,” Uluç said.
This is the sixth year of the WTA Istanbul Cup, which previously welcomed Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova and Elena Dementieva, and the last one before going on a three-year hiatus. Next year, Istanbul will take over the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships from Doha, Qatar.
The Sony Ericsson Championships signals that the tennis agenda in Turkey will become busier and Uluç has no worries about it.
Elected as the federation chief last November following the resignation of Mesut Polat, Uluç found herself in the difficult job of carrying tennis forward in the country.
Although she has worked in several positions at the federation for more than a decade and has the respectable task of chairwoman of the Junior Committee at the European Tennis Association, Uluç admits that being the top figure in Turkish tennis brings different and larger responsibilities. It is clear, since her job is not limited to the international tournaments, but also leading younger generations to tennis.
Two projects, “Tennis Truck” (“Tenis tırı”) and “Play the game, stay in the game” (“Oyna Oyunda Kal”) aim to visit smaller Anatolian cities and find talented and enthusiastic young people. But she admits that the federation has a lack of funds to realize those projects.
“Like every sport federation in Turkey except football, we struggle to find sponsors to realize our projects,” the 56-year-old Uluç says. “Maybe we can think about selling the naming rights of the whole thing instead of projects, like football did with the Turkcell Super League.”
Of course, being one of the very few women working as federation chiefs in Turkey may have its advantages and disadvantages.
“Sometimes it has its advantages, for example we can communicate easier with the WTA Tour CEO Stacey (Allaster) as woman to woman. But sometimes in Turkey it is hard to tell people that I am the chief. I tell them that I am the chairwoman, and they ask, ‘The chairwoman of the Istanbul branch?’” she said.
“I tell them, ‘No, I am the chief of the federation. Exactly the tennis counterpart of the Football Federation Chief,” Uluç said. “Then they understand.”
