Tennis tournament in Berlin: Wake up from the slumber

Steffi Graf, with her monument in Berlin: a stadium from the nineties, depending on how equipped, four - to seven-thousand seats. The concrete protrude grandstands in the bright blue sky, show Avus and the railway embankment, the cold shoulder. Of with red fabric protected Seats the view over the lush Green of the tennis lawn or on the baseline of Centre Court to the idyllic Hundekehlesee. On the terrace of the clubhouse of the LTTC Rot-Weiß activity; on the courts of tennis teachers, school children teach the basics of their sport. When world-class Tennis in the huge Arena, however, there is mostly Emptiness.

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Michael Reinsch

a correspondent for Sport in the Berlin test.

the view out the front page of the mighty building remained open. As well as the retractable extension of the stands, this was a concession by the architect to the location in the Grunewald, when he built the stadium in 1996 for a twenty-million Mark lottery money. For twelve years it served the alignment of the German Open; had Berlin increased its capacity at that time, would have won the WTA tournament, Steffi Graf nine times, elsewhere drawn to it. As recently as 2008, was final. Since then, the Steffi-Graf-Stadion was looking for twelve years a Monument to the great man, and fleeting dreams. Who rotten saw it, had to ask why the members of this exclusive, more-than-120-year-old tennis club had ruined your magnificent system at the Gottfried-von-Cramm-Weg with such a Run. Nothing law, the existence of the Arena made, except the past.

to thank for That now, thanks to the invitation tournament "Bett1Aces", among other things, in the Person of Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova from the Czech Republic and Dominic Thiem from Austria, again tennis professionals, world-class sports to pursue, is the dogs of Adam Szpyt. If the entrepreneur who has made it as a mattress of a rebel, a name that went with the animals for a Walk, he came across the empty stadium. "That hurt me in the soul," he said, as he was the main sponsor of a new Berlin WTA tournament to the revival of the stadium from its slumber.

The Covid-19-pandemic, however, the host of the tournament, stopped; but there was no longer Szpyt stop already. By the distance of the player of Tennis per se Corona was compliant, he found. And since the lawn was already transferred already, as well as rust and moss were easily concealed, he declared himself ready to it, the lack of ticket revenue to compensate for. And now, the Austrian organizer Edwin weindorfer was a two-part invitation tournament with a € 200,000 prize-money on the legs: still up this Wednesday in Grunewald, from Friday to Sunday, in a Hangar of the former Tempelhof airport. A maximum of eight hundred visitors are allowed to spend 120 to 150 euros for the entrance to the plant, in the Hangar it will be even more exclusive. There are not more than three hundred guests will be allowed in.