Champions Cup, Barcelona, Spain
- City:
- Barcelona, Spain
- Dates:
- April 16-18, 2010
- Venue:
- Real Club de Tenis Barcelona 1899
- Director:
- Sixte Cambra
- Surface:
- Clay
- Website:
- www.barcelonaopenbancosabadell.com
- 2009 Results
- tickets
Set amid the beautiful Real Club de Tenis Barcelona 1899, this event overlaps with the ATP event, bringing together some of the great players of the past with the best young athletes of the current era, and in a club that has hosted the Barcelona Open for the past 56 years. Many of the players feel as if they are returning home. Carlos Costa and Sergi Bruguera grew up learning how to play tennis at the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona 1899, and they can often be seen clasping hands with locker-room attendants that have worked there for decades. When Rafael Nadal, Carlos Moya and the rest of the current ATP players arrive over the qualifying weekend, the generations are brought together for a celebration of tennis.
In 2009, the Barcelona Open was the scene of one of the most emotional comebacks that tennis has seen in recent years. Spaniard Felix Mantilla was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2006 after undoing tests on a mole on his back. He spent two long years battling against the disease, and after being given the all-clear in 2009 he came back to win his first ever ATP Champions Tour event at the Barcelona Open - the same place that he won the ATP Tour title in 1999.
As well as hosting the tournament, Barcelona is home to the football team FC Barcelona, the Formula One Spanish Grand Prix and it was the venue for the 1992 Olympics. It is the second largest city in Spain (behind the capital Madrid), located on the northeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Mediterranean Sea.
In April, when the event takes place, warm, sunny weather can often be expected, and on the red clay courts, play is rarely interrupted. Feel the history, feel the top-spin, and watch some of the greatest clay court tennis players ever to pick up a racquet.
