Madrid Proud Of Tournament, Wants To Add Days

Written by: Staff on 13th May 2013

Madrid Proud Of Tournament, Wants To Add Days |

Despite the fact that Spain is still mired in a deep recession the Mutua Madrid Open managed to attract 225,000 fans into the Caja Magica, about a 4% increase over last year.

“Obviously we are not the fifth small Grand Slam, but we pretend to be, and I think we are achieving it,’ said tournament director Manolo Santana. “We’re trying to be the best tournament. Best ATP, the best Masters 1000 of the ATP. Right now we’re in a difficult moment. We’ve seen that even because of the economic difficulties that Spain is going through, the people have answered pretty well. That [titlist] Rafa [Nadal] plays, it’s really important for every single tournament. Rafa didn’t play Miami and the crowd was a little bit lower because of that. Rafa has played here. Whenever he plays here the stadium is full. So it’s really important for any organization, and especially for ours.”

Former Wimbledon titlist Santana was also pleased that despite mediocre crowds for some women’s matches during the week that the final between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova was sold out.

“I think that women’s tennis has a lot empowerment, because today even though it was so hot, the court was nearly full. It’s the first time that that happens in all the time that we’ve been here,” Santana said.

Interestingly while most tournament directors point to their own events as the cream of the top and Santana certainly believes his is one of, or not the cream of the crop, he pointed at two others Masters Series across the Atlantic as one to look at.

“Between Indian Wells and Madrid, they’re really the best tournaments we have of Masters 1000,’ he said. “Not only the because of the prize money, because we are the first tournament talking about prizes because we give out more prizes than Indian Wells and Miami. What’s obvious is we have to keep online all the great effort we have made to be able to achieve the recognition of everyone.”

In 2012, the players ripped the conditions of the then blue clay courts as being nearly unplayable. This year, the players praised the conditions of the red clay courts. Nadal, who was their biggest critic last year, said they were perfect.

“The courts were already laid down before we came,” Santana said of the facility. “They’ve never been the way they are this year. I don’t want to say that our technicians are good or bad, but we have tried to bring here the best of Europe, to bring the clay from the best part of Europe. During the seven months we’ve been working to see what the errors were about. Last year it was not the color, even though there was a lot of talk about that. Simply the courts were not in proper condition. We didn’t find a good way of getting the courts in the condition we have them today. The reality is that the courts are in perfect condition, and we’re going to keep on with that perfection. Madrid is pretty complicated to maintain, because we have a lot of cold nights and so on. But we are going to try to continue with what we have learned from the people that lay down the courts in Monte Carlo and Paris. They have been doing it for a long time, so we will try to keep it up.

The tournament is trying to get the ATP and WTA to allow it to be played over more days. This year it was played over nine and Santana as well as owner Ion Tiriac would like to make it a 10-12 days event, which would be complicated given that there are other tournaments played at that time including the Portugal Open.

“We have so few days, they have to play a match that perhaps finishes, like at 1:00 in the morning, and the next day they have play again. We’re going to try to have more days so that we can have a more calm tournament and don’t force a player finishing really late to play the next day, even though he’s already had 16 hours rest. So that’s our next goal.”

Santana added that there are no plans to include mixed doubles at the event.

©Daily Tennis News Wire

Topics: Maria Sharapova, Mutua Madrid Open, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, Spanish tennis news