RelatedFederer wants sked change THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MELBOURNE, Australia -- Australian Open director Craig Tiley doesn't agree with Roger Federer's opinion that the first Grand Slam of the year needs to be pushed back to February.
Federer, who is bidding for a 14th Grand Slam singles title, said one of his objectives since becoming president of the ATP Players' Council was to work with stakeholders on refining the schedule.
The 27-year-old Swiss star suggested the Australian Open could be pushed back a bit, reconfiguring the leadup schedule to possibly include back-to-back tournaments in the Middle East before an Australian swing.
Tiley said Thursday that Australian Open advance events in Brisbane, Hobart and Sydney had broken attendance and prize money records this year.
"This year Australia has showed the strength of their lead-in events," Tiley said. "There are events that are around the world as there are before and after the Australian Open, particularly in the Middle East, but we don't see them as any threat at all to our lead-in series."
After one of his wins at Kooyong this week in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne, one of his regular tuneup events for the Australian Open, Federer spoke about his work with the Players' Council.
"We had a lot of conversations trying to fix men's tennis in some ways," said Federer. "Definitely the calendar is always something we do talk about.
"I guess to fix the Australian Open problem, you know, having more tournaments beforehand ... to move it backwards a couple of weeks, so you have more of an Australian swing coming, and maybe also the Middle Eastern tournaments."
Federer played an exhibition at Abu Dhabi, which featured six of the top 10 players, and the Qatar Open at Doha to start his season before arriving in Melbourne for the Jan. 19-Feb. 1 Australian Open.
The January time slot for the season's first major has been problematic for players.
Apart from the qualifiers for the season-ending Masters Cup and the Davis Cup final, which start in late November, most players have most of the last two months of the year off.
At the start of the year, there are limited tournaments -- Doha, Chennai, Brisbane, Sydney and Auckland as well as exhibitions -- to fine-tune for a major.
Federer said Thursday that local officials should not be concerned that he was the only top 10 player this year at the Kooyong Classic, an exhibition tournament at the former home of the Australian Open.
"I told him not to be concerned, that's what I said," Federer said of a conversation he had with Kooyong tournament director Colin Stubbs.
"There are many question marks and talk about the Middle East. I mean, I don't understand, one exhibition in Abu Dhabi kind of freaks everybody out down here.
"I still believe guys like (Andy) Murray, (James) Blake, (Andy) Roddick, everybody's kind of hanging around but not playing, Rafa's (Rafael Nadal) hanging around," said Federer.
Many of the top players have entered Kooyong in the past.
"Maybe a few of them would have loved to have played this event but entered too late, or didn't want to take the chance and now they regret it, who knows?" Federer said. "Abu Dhabi won't maybe happen every single year ... there's no reason to panic."
To give the top players more lead-in time, Federer suggested moving the Dubai event forward from February to January and having it back-to-back with the other Gulf tournament at Doha.
The men's and women's tours have made moves to condense the season over recent years to appease top players.
But organizers of the Australian Open have resisted pushing the major back because it is scheduled toward the end of the national summer holidays and attracts more than 600,000 fans across two weeks.
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