A new exhibition tournament is born in Argentina: it will be called Road to Australia and it will help the tennis players to get in competitive shape for the first tour of the year in Oceania, and the public to make contact with elite players, on one of the few occasions when they can have them close, challenging their limits.
It is so, from December 16 to 20, the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis It will once again look like its best, although changing its usual brick dust for a cement surface, as demanded by the tennis players’ preparations for that first tour of the season.
“That’s how the idea was born,” he said. Andres Schneidertournament director and Argentine coach who managed to take a player to the final of a Grand Slam: He did it with Mariano Puerta at Roland Garros 2005. “There are so many players who come to prepare, to train here. And then we said to ourselves: Why don’t we try to do something that would encourage the boys to go to Australia? That’s how it all started,” he summarizes.
Emiliano SerranoCEO of the agency that carries out the marketing, commercialization and staging of the contest, remembers that in the restaurant under the Suzanne Lenglen stadium, during this year’s Roland Garros, they decided to accelerate the project that they had been developing for about six months. “We closed our eyes and said: ‘let’s get into it’. From that moment on we are at full capacity. It is a lot of work, especially this first year, because we as a company are carrying out the production, the logistics and the relationship with the players’ teams,” he mentions.
According to Schneiter, Buenos Aires is one of the places in the world that concentrates the largest number of players to train, bringing together the majority of South American tennis. “Then you can find yourself, in December, with 30 players among the first 200 in the world. And it happens that they have a lot of training, but they arrive lacking in moderately serious competition at the first tournaments,” he analyzes.
“What happens to me is doing the preseason here and arriving very raw to play in Australia. Although we coaches take care of putting together some matches between our players, there is a lack of competition. That’s why we thought about doing something for them to compete beforehand, but we didn’t want an exhibition of two or four players, but rather doing something bigger,” explains Schneiter, and slips the possibility of adding Sebastián Gutiérrez, coach of Sebastian Baez y Francisco Comesaña.
Starting December 1, the organizers will take control of the stadium and the surrounding area to advance in one of the phases of the project: setting up the stadium environment. amenities for the public and sponsors and the gastronomic patio. And also, to begin the construction of the cement surface that will be used for the tournament.
It will be a court with similar characteristics to the Australian ones, although not as fast, so that the players feel more comfortable in their preparation. The balls will be the same ones they will compete with throughout the first tour. “Sportingly speaking, The idea is to replicate the conditions that exist in Australia”says Serrano.
The format of the contest has particular characteristics and is crossed by ATP regulations, which establish that this type of non-scoring tournaments, as well as exhibitions, cannot last more than two days or must have one stop in the middle. And in addition, they must provide Sunday as a day of rest, if the tournaments that follow start on a Monday.
The competition system will be the so-called Round Robinwith four members chosen by draw in each of the four groups. On Tuesday and Wednesday the clashes will occur in each of them, with eight games scheduled per day. Thursday will be a day of rest.
Those who obtain better results with the previous two matches will continue to advance. Friday will be the day of the semifinals between the first four of each group, and on Saturday the final will be played.
The matches will be two sets of four games each, with a definition in Super Tiebreak in case of equality in sets. “This way it will be more dynamic and not so exhausting for the tennis players.”. The criterion is simply to adapt to Australia and make it as comfortable as possible for the players,” highlights Schneiter.
The idea was well received by the players, given the opportunity for competition that is added to the preseason in Buenos Aires, which has similar climatic conditions to Melbourne in terms of heat and humidity.
They had a similar response from the companies that decided to accompany them in this new project. “It is true that the current economic context generated some concern. Even so, there were many companies from different sectors that decided to be present,” says Serrano. “We hope for a good response from the public, that they enjoy a four-day event with their families where they can come with the kids to eat something, watch great tennis and have an entertainment space at the end of the year.”
Las general tickets will depart from $23 mil and will increase depending on the location, which may be in the elbows of the stadium, the preferential seats or the boxes. “There are promotions for weekly tickets, for semi-finals and finals, and also packs for the family. Our intention is for it to be an accessible event and for everyone to enjoy it,” highlights Serrano. The tournament will be televised by ESPN y Disney+.
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