Mayors, ministers, ministers, businessmen from pharmaceuticals, automobiles, the media, industrialists… For a week, many of them have sat together at the table, for lunch or dinner in the village, to talk about tennis, and also to open economic links, everything that Jordi Cambra (68), president of the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona, ​​underlines in his conversation with La Vanguardia
–Our trophy is more than just a tennis tournament. What we want is for a lot of things to happen around tennis,†she says.
Don’t have enough with what you have?
We want to be the best 500 tournament possible. Come on, make it look like a Masters 1000. We want to be a boutique tournament, a kind of mini 1000, because of the quality of the players that come and also because of the panel of parallel activities.
Improving the current level is going to be difficult. If Daniil Medvédev had not resigned, the Barcelona team would have gathered four top 5s (in the end, there were three top 5s: Alcaraz, Tsitsipás and Ruud).
This year we celebrated a round number, the 70th anniversary. And we wanted to make sure that it was going to be a special edition. The expectations were very high and the economic effort has also been high.
It is not the same to have only one Spanish tennis player of the first magnitude, than to have two (this, despite the fact that Nadal had been absent at the last minute).
Under those circumstances, the pressure is higher. We cannot allow any of them to fail due to economic conditions. And around us there is a range of Masters 1000: Monte Carlo, before; and Madrid or Rome, below.
And what must they do to become a mini 1000?
Andrea Gaudenzi (president of the ATP circuit) has come to spend a few days with us. He has told us that we are doing well, but that we must maintain the line of good treatment with the players. We are already working on a list of improvements.
For example?
In matters such as restoration, we need more variety. And we must correct some dysfunctions with the lodging, or in the rest space. We want the player to feel at home, not just them, but their partners or the team that accompanies them.
Don’t the other tournaments treat them well?
Of course, they all do better and better. What happens is that some tournaments are held in inhospitable spaces, where an artificial space is created for a few days, a space that then disappears. We are a club tournament. And for this reason, our facilities are designed to accommodate tennis players in the venue. That makes us practically unique.
