ATP Mallorca - a small conclusion
Lawn tennis was played in Mallorca this week - Daniil Medvedev was crowned the winner in the end . What do we take away from the Mallorca Championships?
by Florian Heer from Santa Ponca
last edit: Jun 27, 2021, 03:30 pm
End of June in Mallorca. The number of arrivals of holiday guests on the largest Balearic island is slowly but steadily increasing, despite the often found posters on the facades of many buildings with the cry for help "SOS-Turismo". The most popular foreign holiday destination for Germans is picking up speed again.
Fittingly, the Mallorca Championships, the first ATP tournament in Spain, took place on grass this week. The Mallorca Country Club in Santa Ponca, Calvia, in the southeast of the island, was inaugurated on six newly designed original Wimbledon lawns.
We were there for the week and we noticed:
The tournament was very well attended. Even if the event ended only two days before the start in Wimbledon on Saturday, three players from the top 10 were at the start with Daniil Medvedev, Dominic Thiem and Roberto Bautista Agut. Following his tournament victory, Medvedev went straight to London by private jet that same evening
With Novak Djokovic, the Austrian organizers of e-motion, who are also responsible for the tournaments in Stuttgart and Vienna, have signed another big name. The fact that the number 1 in the world rankings "only" competed in doubles was actually something of a peculiarity. Apart from team events, Djokovic played his first doubles tournament since Dubai last February. There it was already over in the first lap. With his Spanish buddy Carlos Gomez-Herrera, the journey actually went to the finals. Before the final, however, the duo had to withdraw from the tournament. Official reason: Gomez-Herrera was out with an injury to his right ankle.
As with the previous ATP events in Spain (Marbella, Barcelona and Madrid), spectators were also allowed in Mallorca. Around 1,500 spectators were able to watch the lawn festival on site and spread a lively atmosphere. The last days of the tournament were completely sold out.
Stars & starlets in Mallorca. A big party started on the Avinguda del Golf on the Friday evening before the start of the tournament. Former number 2 in the world Tommy Haas and Croatian icon Goran Ivanisevic, who celebrated the greatest triumph of his career exactly 20 years ago with winning the tournament at Wimbledon, inaugurated the new Center Court under floodlights in a show match. Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp and Mario Götze, who scored the German national soccer team in Brazil in 2014 with his golden goal in the final against Argentina for the World Cup title, as well as actor and tennis fan Mark Keller, seemed to enjoy the event very much.
Speaking of floodlights. Actually, the Mallorca Championships should be the first lawn tournament in history that featured evening sessions. With the exception of the inauguration event, there was little to be seen of this. Maybe next year then.