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THE TR NEWSLETTER: MONDAY, OCTOBER, 22, NO. 247

The demise of Zurich: Tournament loses tier status

Salad days of popular Graf, Navratilova, Hingis long gone

By Chris Bowers, Special to TennisReporters.net

FROM THE ZURICH OPEN – In any calendar restructuring, there will always be winners and losers, and one of the more august women's tournaments in Europe has just crowned its last champion as a Tier I event. The Zurich Open – once a citadel of Steffi Graf and the scene of one of the greatest non-Slam duels between Graf and Martina Navratilova – will survive for one more year, but only as a Tier II tournament, and

Remarkably little was made of Zurich's demise when Justine Henin won the event's 24th title, beating Tatiana Golovin in the final. The biggest hint came when Henin said in an on-court interview, "I can't promise I'll be back next year, but I'll promise to do my best to be back." Moments before, Henin had talked about how she needs to plan her calendar smartly to avoid playing too much, and the subtext to her "promise" was that she will probably have no time for a Tier-II event so close to the end of the year.