“LAURA ROBSON is hoping the new women’s event at Queen’s Club will one day have equal prize money with the men. The prestigious Barons Court Tennis Centre will host the men’s ATP singles and doubles tournaments as normal in mid-June in the weeks before the Wimbledon Championships. 2 Emma Raducanu has signed up for the HSBC Championships Credit: EPA”, — write: www.thesun.co.uk
The prestigious Barons Court Tennis Centre will host the men’s ATP singles and doubles tournaments as normal in mid-June in the weeks before the Wimbledon Championships.
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Emma Raducanu has signed up for the HSBC ChampionshipsCredit: EPA
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Laura Robson hopes to see equal prize money among women and men in the sportCredit: GettyBut it will open its doors a week earlier this time to welcome female players onto the grass-court grounds for the first time since 1973.
Emma Raducanu, Katie Boulter, Naomi Osaka and Australia Open champion Madison Keys have signed up to play the HSBC Championships – it will carry 500 world ranking points for the champion – in the days after the French Open in Paris has concluded.
Online tickets went on sale last week for LTA Advantage members and they are now on general sale.
Robson, 31, is the new tournament director for the women’s tournament, having previously been in charge of the Nottingham Open.
Tommy Paul lifted the men’s trophy in June 2024 and received £350,000 for beating Italian Lorenzo Musetti in the final but the women will not receive cash parity this summer.
All four tennis Slams award the same prize for its two singles winners.
She said: “Across the tour, I’d love to see equal prize money happen and the WTA have all the investment coming in to try and be able to do that.
“But they’re a long way off. So I think it’s more of a tour issue year-round than just Queen’s on its own.
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“You’d start at the top tier of the game and then hopefully you can filter that down.
“For Queen’s especially, being a new event, it’s not going to have equal prize money. Long term, that’s where we’d like to get to.”
Robson – winner of Olympic mixed doubles silver with Andy Murray at London 2012 – is ready for whatever is thrown at her in this new role.
Whether that is the complication of days of bad weather, schedule headaches or player complaints.
The former Wimbledon junior girls champion, who is a pundit on Sky Sports, said: “It’s a new event. You never know how it’s going to go.
“But we’re really lucky to have the combination of the men alongside it.
“I’m very positive about it. It’s going to be really great for the players who are involved and also the fact that women’s tennis is back in London.
“So, fingers crossed that everything goes to plan.
“The logistics are very hard because it’s a member’s club. So they are used to still having a lot of their own spaces when the tournament is still on.
“And we’ve taken over the women’s dressing room for the first time, which was harder than you’d think to get over the line.
“I couldn’t be more confident about the courts and the data that’s gone into seeing what is going to make them last longer.
“We’ve got less matches on Centre Court and on Court Two, more on the outside courts, to make sure that they’re still in perfect condition for the second week.
“I was tournament director at Nottingham for the last two years, which is stressful enough because it’s a combined event.
“In terms of scheduling, I feel like I’ve been through it with two years of utter trash weather in Nottingham. So as long as it’s not that stressful I’ll be okay.”
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