MADRID, 21 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish tennis players expressed their complaint and disappointment after the decision this Wednesday of the Mutua Madrid Open, a Master 1000 and WTA 1000 category tournament that takes place from April 26 to May 8, due to the absence of invitations for this edition, except for Carlos Jimeno.
The organizers announced that the ‘wild cards’ would be for Andy Murray, Carlos Gimeno, Lucas Pouille and Jack Draper, in the men’s draw, and for Naomi Osaka, Linda Fruhvirtova, Mónica Puig, Marta Kostyuk and Qinwen Zheng, in the women’s draw.
This decision has provoked complaints from several of the ‘Armada’ tennis players who described, in a statement on social networks, that they found it “surprising, as well as very frustrating, that the largest tennis event in Spain shows a such little (or no) support for Spanish tennis players in the invitations granted, especially in the main draws”.
“We do not understand that the promoting company and the owners of the tournament have found the criteria to give these invitations reasonable. We understand that some of them give them at their own discretion, but not that in all of them their commercial interests prevail and totally getting out of the trajectory followed in previous years. We have many tennis players who have been left at the gates of being able to participate and who have been ignored in their requests to receive an invitation”, they lamented.
In this sense, they recalled that other tournaments of “the same category” show “immensely greater support” for local players, giving the example of Rome, which has given “all” its first invitations to Italian tennis players.
“We fully trust that the main sponsors of the tournament, including the Madrid City Council, Mutua Madrileña and Spanish companies (as well as the Spanish sports federations and mostly national spectators) want to support national tennis and invest in this tournament with the intention of helping our sport and hoping to see the greatest possible Spanish presence, so we imagine that they share our disappointment and we hope that they express it as well”, they added.
This note was not signed by anyone in particular, but it was posted on their social networks by players such as Fernando Verdasco, Carlos Taberner, Bernabé Zapata, Pablo Andújar, Roberto Carballés, Nuria Parrizas and Aliona Bolsova.
In addition, the current number three in the world, Paula Badosa, also expressed her disappointment. “It’s a huge opportunity for everyone, and it’s a shame that the only tournament we have at such a level, this happens… We have to give our tennis players opportunities to continue growing…”, she stressed in her official account of ‘Twitter’.
“Very sad to see things like this for Spanish tennis. When on top of that there is a lot of potential… A year ago I entered the tournament for a ‘wild card’ and I did one of the best tournaments of my career. A tournament that I will never forget thanks to an invitation”, added the Catalan, who was a semifinalist in 2021.