Queen's Club Tournament: Women's Event Outshines Men's Amidst Player Injuries and Tax Law Advantages

One of the more amusing sights at the Queen’s Club tournament each year comes before even entering the grounds. On the first day of play on Monday, a deluge of spectators invariably descend on Barons Court station, just 150 metres from the entrance.

So many people passing through a tiny London Underground station naturally means long queues at the barriers. That congestion is not helped by many of them comically pausing in front of the gates to frantically search for their debit cards or desperately try to unlock their phones.

The Queen’s Club crowd may not exactly be the target audience of the LTA’s mission to open up the sport to all parts of society, but the attendance each year is truly impressive.

This year, general sale tickets for the men’s event sold out in less than a day. Its enduring popularity has felt even more significant over the past week given one of its weakest fields with just one top 10 player, Alex de Minaur, in the draw.

It is the latest example of the injury crisis that has swept the men’s tour over the past year, with so many young players dealing with significant injuries. The absences of Carlos Alcaraz and Jack Draper were particularly huge blows, but injuries to Lorenzo Musetti, Rafael Jódar and Holger Rune also weakened the draw.

The UK’s more comprehensive tax laws for international players also mean the Halle tournament, which had seven of the top 11 players this week, will hold an advantage over London for years to come.

The understated nature of the men’s event has only further highlighted the wild success of the women’s event, which exploded into action a week earlier as the site of one of the most significant stories of the year with the return of Serena Williams to doubles alongside Victoria Mboko, after four years in retirement.

That spectacle ended on a sad note, with Mboko slipping badly in her first-round match and tearing a medial collateral ligament. Still, as the event progressed, it showcased two of the more impressive days for British players over the past few years as Katie Boulter toppled Elena Rybakina, the world No 2 and reigning Australian Open champion, to reach the semi-finals. That was before Emma Raducanu won two matches in a day to reach her biggest final since winning the US Open in 2021.

The LTA can often serve as a punchbag for all sorts of frustrations within British tennis, the latest being the decision not to award the defending champion Tatjana Maria a main draw wildcard, so it is important to commend the organisation when it gets things right. It was a brilliant choice to finally bring women’s tennis back to Queen’s after a 52-year absence and in spectacular fashion.

The organisers certainly had to navigate some tricky issues. Not all members at the Queen’s Club, which functions as a private tennis club for about 49 weeks of the year, were pleased with the prospect of another week of professional players encroaching on their turf. Others, meanwhile, had legitimate concerns about British tennis being too London-centric. There were smaller questions about whether the men would object to playing on courts with a week of wear and tear.

Last year’s edition was a great success, but any lingering reservations this year were surely dismissed by the sight of Williams marching out on to the court for the first time in her career.

Between Williams, Raducanu and Boulter, last week played out as a series of joyful moments in west London and the atmosphere in each of their matches was unforgettable. Donna Vekic, a lucky loser, eventually defeated Raducanu to lift the biggest title of her career.

Women’s tennis is the most successful women’s sport in the world, but not all events attract great crowds. Here, the women’s tournament sold more than 70,000 tickets and was at 98% capacity during the whole week, selling out on five of its seven days. Some 9,000 fans packing out the stadium each day, even in the middle of working days, was a magnificent sight.

The LTA has also taken steps to address the dramatic prize-money gap between its events, with the tournament increasing the prize money by more than a third this year, making its total purse of $1,915,000 (£1,443,000) the second highest for a standalone Women’s Tennis Association 500 event on the tour.

By comparison, the German Open in Berlin this week, in which nine of the top 10 players entered, has a prize money pool of $1,206,446.

With the prize money for the Queen’s Club men’s tournament standing at €2,583,330, its increase of 2.4% in line with other ATP 500 events, the gap is still large but it has narrowed.

It is not a stretch to say that, in certain ways, the women’s Queen’s Club tournament completely overshadowed the men’s this year. This is just its second year of existence, meaning the tournament’s growing profile will allow it to build momentum with the goal of properly establishing it as a self-sufficient staple of the British summer sporting calendar and one of the best individual WTA tournaments on the tour.