Rain delays add to call for covered courts
The rain delays Friday evening and Saturday afternoon created logistical headaches for organizers of the Rogers Cup men’s tennis tournament.
But they say every cloud has a silver lining and the torrential rain wasn’t totally unwelcome.
“We need some rain to help with the roof,” a Tennis Canada insider said earlier this week as the IGA Stadium was bathed in sunshine.
Tennis Canada has proposed the construction of a retractable roof over IGA Stadium and Aviva Centre in Toronto. The projects, still in the planning stages, carry $70-million price tags for each facility and Tennis Canada is looking for financial help from municipal, provincial and federal governments.
There has been no indication from the various governments as to whether they are interested in funding the projects, but Montreal tournament director Eugene Lapierre made a pitch on the opening night of this year’s tournament when he thanked the three levels of government for helping to create the facilities at Jarry Park.
Getting help for the Montreal project is a priority because Ontario and the City of Toronto have been reluctant to help the Toronto facility. The strategy is to get funding for Montreal and then challenge Toronto to match the effort.
Organizers of the annual ATP and WTA events in Canada say the roofs are necessary because Canada is competing with other cities around the world for the top events. Lapierre noted that there was competition from Asia and the Middle East. The Madrid Open recently lost its status as an ATP Masters 1000 event with its spot going to Shanghai, which becomes the only Masters 1000 event with a retractable roof.
The Paris Masters is played indoors and the other seven Masters 1000 events are exposed to the elements. The fear over losing top designation for the Canadian tournaments seems unfounded if you listen to the players — who are near unanimous in their love of Montreal — or if you look at the crowds, which year after year establish attendance record for one-week tournaments on the ATP and WTA tours.
The final attendance for the week in Montreal was a record 223,016.
The strong showing of Canadian players Denis Shapovalov, Milos Raonic, Vasek Pospisil and hometown favourite Felix Auger-Aliassime meant there were near-capacity crowds early in the week.
“I can tell you now we are going to break the record,” Lapierre said at his annual state of the tournament news conference before Sunday’s final. “We should be beyond 220,000. This is including zero spectators for last night (Saturday), for Session 14. We would have broken the record by far. Now it’s going to be by a few thousand.
“During the whole week there were many people on the site and we are very happy,” Lapierre added.
“There are more fans, more tennis fans, more people coming. Of course, we want that success every year. We try for it.”
There were zero spectators Saturday night because an ankle injury forced Gael Monfils to pull out of his semifinal match against top-seeded Rafael Nadal. The rain delay may have been a factor in Monfils’ decision.