The Hangar Games could be a new success in Tennis. As in Berlin on Sunday, the Finals of the invitation tournament were playing in a huge aircraft shed of the former Airport Tempelhof, you will not be able to be a farewell to really talk. As a substitute for the due to the Corona restrictions cancelled women’s tournament Berlin Open developed and for three days, first on grass in the Steffi-Graf-stadium, the Grunewald, and then three days on the hard court in the backdrop of the former target point of the Berlin airlift played out, has proven to be the emergency about the dimensions.
Michael Reinsch
a correspondent for sports in Berlin.
F. A. Z.
“The discovery of the tournament in the Hangar,” said tournament Director Barbara Rittner is. Plenty of six thousand square feet of space and a clear height of ten meters, provided space for a tennis court and small bleachers for a total of two hundred visitors at the front sides. Rittner had experienced, as an Intern of the TV channel RBB, a riding tournament in the spacious facility. However, the history and the room you had like to overwhelm. Through the open roller door with a spectacular view on the airfield offered with the towers of the neukölln mosque in the Background, and a historic aircraft from the time the raisin bombers in the foreground.
Tommy Haas as the icing on the cake
Indeed, Marius Müller-Westernhagen came on Saturday, and experienced with, such as Andrea Petkovic, the two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova from the Czech Republic, lost in three sets. So he was one of about a hundred spectators. Not even a rock star as he makes the tournament a public event, because of hygiene rules and high entry prices restrict the visit. “We get on”, however, has decided Adam Szpyt, chief of the main sponsor, Bett1, a mattress manufacturer, “We have proved to the world that you can unsubscribe, major sporting events, under Corona conditions.” Barbara Rittner attested to the Play “an absolute world-class level” and praised the fact that the returned three years after the end of his long career, for three games, 42-year-old Tommy Haas, the event placed the icing on the cake.
Haas, as once, with an upside-down hat, and great ambition at the Start was great. The 18-year-old young star Jannik Silent rank of a third rate. Jan-Lennard Struff, the number 34 in the world, ranking it in two sentences down. And against the superior Dominic Thiem, the third in the world rankings, won this Sunday the final against Jannik Sinner, won it, after all, two set of balls. Then he could no longer. To be the third-place match, Haas had to give up, because the calf tweaked.
Haas have shown, praised his former Manager Edwin Weindorfer, that he’ll show the flag, while players such as Alexander Zverev, who had been expected in Berlin, cancelled the appointment. For the Berlin concept of the Tour-organizers of the WTA and ATP, interested, the tournament organizer of Berlin from Stuttgart, Vienna and Palma de Mallorca reported. Perhaps you, too, will pass, to be able to get the plant running again, first to the spectators and the players need to put in a security bubble. “We will try to share our Hygiene concept with others”, promised the wine villages.
Whether the Tennis-circus opens in August, its gates or in the forced break – the Austrian Impresario is forearmed. “We gave it a starting shot,” he says of the invitation tournament with a total of 200,000 dollars in prize money in Berlin: “We have created a brand.” Line judge, he does not need thanks to electronic Monitoring. Led display all-round and up to twelve cameras on the Court to make every performance and every error, every gesture and every facial expression is visible. “Maybe this was a foretaste of the US Open,” said Weindorfer. The future of Tennis – comes, it remains in the new reality, out of the Hangar in Tempelhof?
