ATP Tour tournaments are currently taking place in various parts of the world. Tennis players are competing this week in Doha, Rio de Janeiro and Los Cabos. Another Mexican city, Acapulco, will host another event next week. It will be of ATP 500 rank and the prize pool will reach nearly $2.5 million.
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Tennis players were advised not to leave the hotel. Horror in the city center. “Shootings and executions”
Usually, when competing in a city, tennis players try not to think only about the tournament and, as a distraction, they devote time to tourism. In Acapulco this will be difficult due to the situation in the city center. The organizer informed players, their teams and ATP staff that they are “strongly advised” to limit their movements to the tournament hotel and tennis facility only and to use only vehicles provided by the event authorities.
The organizers admitted to the competitors that they had concerns about the “serious infrastructure problems” in the city caused by Hurricane Otis in October last year, but above all also about the “high crime rate” in the center of Acapulco, the British portal inews reported.
The ATP says it is confident the facility will “meet the standards for a successful event.” “It is not uncommon for players to receive safety advice from the ATP as a precautionary measure at more than 250 ATP Tour and Challenger Tour events each season,” a men’s tennis spokesman said. – The opinion in the context of the Acapulco tournament takes into account the additional complexity of the disruption caused by Hurricane Otis. In recent months, significant efforts and investments have been made to renovate the Acapulco facility, he added.
“The British Foreign Office describes the state of Guerrero, in which Acapulco is the largest city, as a violent and historically dangerous state,” quotes inews.co.uk. “There is organized crime present throughout the state, including in downtown Acapulco. There have been cases of gun crime, including shootings and executions, both in tourist areas of Acapulco,” the local ministry continues.
Additionally, the U.S. government banned its citizens from visiting Acapulco because “crime and violence are common” and “in many areas of Guerrero, armed groups operate independently of the government.” The entire state is under a U.S. government “do not travel” advisory.
The world’s leading tennis players – the ATP 500 tournament – included, among others: Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev and Holger Rune – will also have a problem reaching Acapulco at all, because the local airport currently does not serve any international connections, and only six planes a day land there from other parts of the country.
It seemed that this year’s event in Acapulco might be canceled when Hurricane Otis, the strongest-ever hurricane to make landfall in the Pacific, passed through the city last October. The GNP Seguros arena, where the competition will take place from 2022, was destroyed and flooded, but in December the organizers assured that they would be able to make the facility usable again to host the best tennis players in the world. A few days ago, the Mexican newspaper “Milenio” reported that the reconstruction work was 97 percent complete. “It cost the organizers over 9 million pounds,” say the British.
The ATP 500 tournament in Acapulco will take place from February 26 to March 2. Alex De Minaur will be the defending champion.
2024-02-23 21:52:00
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