Tennis draws can look wonderfully simple until the little labels appear beside players’ names. Suddenly you are staring at seed, qualifier, wild card and lucky loser, wondering whether you have missed a small administrative drama before anyone has even hit a forehand. The good news is that these terms are not as mysterious as they sound. They are mostly about how players get into a tournament, where they sit in the draw, and what happens when someone pulls out. So, what do se

Ask a simple tennis question and, very often, the sport hands you a draw sheet the size of a tablecloth. So, how many tennis tournaments are there around the world? The honest answer is: it depends what you mean by “tennis tournament”. If you mean the events most fans see on television, the number is roughly in the low hundreds each season across the ATP Tour, WTA Tour and the four Grand Slams. If you include Challenger events, ITF tournaments, juniors, wheelchair tennis, sen