Tennis tournaments don’t always have to be about points. Or about a winner’s check worth six million dollars that Jannik Sinner picked up in October at the Six Kings Slam in Riyadh, Arabia. It will be much more comfortable here Ischgl Trophy walk across the tennis stage, which will celebrate its premiere from December 11th to 14th.
The organizer is responsible for this Edwin Weindorferwho has been in the business for years and has already made people sit up and take notice with spectacular ideas. At the beginning of his career, he had the tennis cracks play on the roof of a shopping center in Graz or had them play in an airplane hangar at Berlin-Tempelhof Airport. The partner of Vienna tournament boss is now distinguished Herwig Straka responsible for the ATP lawn tournaments in Stuttgart and Mallorca.
Star cast and winter fun
But the masses won’t move in because of Weindorfer, and Salzburgers also know that. So a number of stars are competing for prize money of at least 100,000 euros. Also Dominic Thiemwho was most recently able to take part in the Red Bull BassLine exhibition in Vienna, is there. Plus the former world number two Tommy Haas from Germany, the eccentric former top ten man Fabio Fognini from Italy and with Zverev another German. However, it is not Alexander, who is third in the ranking, but his brother Mishawhich years ago was also among the world’s best. But the background to the tournament is different: “The combination of winter sports and tennis with a touch of Christmas spirit is unique,” says Weindorfer.
World stars were there
The matter is not entirely new. For around 20 years there was St. Anton the almost legendary Tennis Trophy, in which stars such as Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Marat Safin and Yevgeny Kafelnikov, all of whom were already number one in the world, performed. But Austria’s elite around Jürgen Melzer and Stefan Koubek also had fun in the legendary ski paradise.