Function
The ITF operates the three major national team competitions in the sport, the Davis Cup for men, the Fed Cup for women and the Hopman Cup, mixed teams. The ITF sanctions the four Grand Slams: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open.
While the ATP Tour and WTA Tour control most other high-level professional tournaments, the ITF runs developmental professional tours for men and women. The ITF Men's Circuit, consists of Futures tournaments with prize funds of USD 10,000 or USD 15,000. Medium level men's tournaments are run by the ATP through the ATP Challenger Tour. The ITF previously also ran four-week satellite tournaments of roughly the same quality level as Futures tournaments, but they were discontinued after the 2006 season. The ITF Women's Circuit incorporates both lower and mid-level tournaments, with prize funds ranging from USD 10,000 to USD 100,000. Virtually every ATP and WTA player started by playing on the ITF circuits.
The ITF is responsible for maintaining an international under-18 junior circuit for boys and girls, as well as a wheelchair tennis circuit.
Read more about this topic: International Tennis Federation
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.”
—Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)
“Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)
“The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)