It has affected her and her father greatly. So she has decided to skip Bangalore to avoid any controversy,” said Bhupathi.
NEW DELHI: Sania Mirza’s refusal to play in the Bangalore Open, beginning March 3, on the advice of her manager Mahesh Bhupathi is being projected as a continuation of the distress the flag controversy shovelled on the player. “It has affected her and her father greatly. So she has decided to skip Bangalore to avoid any controversy,” said Bhupathi.
But it seems the pull-out will fuel the controversy all the more. “Till now we had not received any indication that she would not play,” said Sundar Raju, tournament director of the $600,000 Tier II Bangalore Open.
The first whiff the tournament got of Mirza’s decision was when it got the final entry list from the WTA over the weekend.
With the entry deadline expiring on January 20, Mirza had decided quite some time back that she would not be playing in Bangalore. As to just why she chose to keep quiet about it till now is best known to her camp and managers but tennis insiders are quite certain that the issue has more to do with commercial reasons than anything else.
Last year Sania was paid to the tune of $100,000 as appearance money to figure in the then $175,000 prize money event.
This year around, it has been reliably learnt, the organisers were not willing to shell out a similar amount. They would rather offer the likes of Serena Williams a sum in the vicinity of $150,000 to boost the credibility of their event.
At the same time, apart from India, Mirza would not get appearance money for an event in the league of a Tier II anywhere else in the world with the exception of the Middle East.
The fact that the altitude of Bangalore imparts a higher bounce to the ball is also not much to the player’s liking. Till now she has not gone beyond the quarterfinals, losing the last two years to players ranked at least 80 places below her.
Till 2006, the Bangalore event was also run by Bhupathi’s company Globosport before the state association (Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association) decided to do things by itself.
India’s leading female player missing from a tournament in the country does take away much from its appeal and perhaps that’s just what Mirza’s managers were looking at to force a good deal from the Bangalore Open.
The strange bit is that in the week of the event there is no other tournament around the world that Mirza could play. While defending the 35 points she earned the same time last year would not be perhaps too much of a motivation for Mirza, the fact that she would be just sitting free would also not be too enthusing.
There is certainly more than just the possibility of another controversy that keeps Mirza from going to Bangalore a full month later.
As to just why the same fear would not make her miss the Globosport-backed Sunfeast Open that begins on October 6 is also an interesting poser.
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