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MONTE-CARLO ROLEX MASTERSApril 18, 2010Zeljko FranulovicMONTE CARLO, MONACO ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome first to this press conference and then to the cocktail party for the end of our tournament. It is the opportunity for me on behalf of the tournament management to thank you once again for being so faithful to our tournament and to give you briefly the results of this 104th edition of our Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters tournament. As I announced in our former press conferences in Monaco and Paris, our team was able to make considerable improvements to the tournament site this year. Our efforts, many focused on improving the comfort for the general public, but there is one novelty that is of direct concern for you, dear members of the media, it is the refurbishing of the press center, especially with the enlargement of this interview room. In spite also of technical difficulties we had to face, we were able, thanks to Monte-Carlo Telecom, to give you wi-fi coverage with more than 20 mega so that you can now work without any problems on an Internet network which is up to the standard of our event. As last year, our Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters was launched with a launch party organized by Melanie-Antoinette de Massy. This party, after its first edition in 2009, has now become a major event in our tournament. This is thanks to the support of our partners and players. Another highlight of our tournament was the very much appreciated visit on Sunday, the 11th of April, of Novak Djokovic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to the Monaco Oceanographic Museum. This museum this year is celebrating its centenary. Once again, a record in the attendance here, thanks to the enlargement of our capacity, we were able to reach last year a record of attendance with 124,000 spectators. This year, in spite of very adverse circumstances like winter weather in the beginning of the week or the train strikes or the closing down of airports, we still were able to reach the record figure of 2009 with 124,000 spectators again. We are extremely satisfied with this attendance figure and we hope this figure will now become a reference for the future editions of our tournament. As far as the field is concerned, once again the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters had a wonderful draw. On the 15th of March when the registrations closed, we had 8 of the top 10 worldwide players. We regret the absence of Del Potro, Davydenko, Soderling, Simon and Monfils. They were the first ones registered, but unfortunately they had to pull out at the last minute because of injuries that severely jeopardized their season. So we would like to thank them for being faithful for our tournament, and we wish them to get better very soon, and we are looking forward to welcoming them next year again here. But the true attraction for our tournament in 2010 was the press tournament, organized in collaboration with Sergio Tacchini. I would like to thank Anthony Boyer, our referee, who masterfully supervised this tournament, as well as the 16 participants. So before giving the floor to Anthony, who will give the results of the tournament, I would like to once again thank you all very warmly. I would like to make an appointment with you for our next edition of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters on the 9th to the 17th of April, 2011. I'm now available to you individually to answer any questions you might have. Q. Although I'm not representing officially the press, I'm one of the veterans here. I would like to thank you for the efforts you made for the press and this new room, so thank you very much. ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: And now a question. Q. I would like to ask, what is exactly the capacity with the new tribunes? How many exactly can you fit in one day when it's full? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: For us what's most important is the capacity of the Center Court and to a certain degree the Court des Princes because you have the ATP rules, which says exactly over 10,000, which we have on the Center Court, 10,080, 10,100, and more than 3,000 on the Court Des Princes. The capacity is very easy to calculate, because then you have, as we call them, the courts annex, which can seat not too many people. Maybe Court No. 2 a thousand something, then all the rest. But there are a lot of people walking in the alleys while these two are full. Q. What has been the record for one day? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: The record for one day last year, I think we equaled this year, was 13,000 people. So it means 10,000 here and 3,000 there, but it's tickets sold. There are more people on the grounds, for sure. Q. Do you have a good relationship with Federer, because he didn't come? Did he call? Did he explain why he didn't come? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: Well, I'll answer that with an anecdote. We used to have all the players like Federer and Nadal. When people were buying tickets, they were saying, Can we buy a ticket for the final between Federer and Nadal? So we were laughing. But this shows that the players were there. We had last year Nadal/Djokovic also, although Federer was in the field. I think we always had good relationships with Federer before. But now I think he changed his approach maybe to his schedule and to his tennis because he was able to reach the record of Sampras in terms of Grand Slam victories, and also he didn't have one child, but two children now. I think we'll have to see his program at the end of the year and not in the beginning. So it's always a good thing to have Federer here, but I think we are going to get used to not having him here. We are working in our tournament with a long-term perspective. I think we have now reached a reputation and awareness that allows us not to be concerned by this kind of thing anymore. Q. You worked a long time with the ATP, so you know all the mechanisms there. Do you know how long this tournament will remain a non-commitment tournament or are there talks that will be resumed with the ATP about this? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: In fact, all the Masters 1000 have a 10-year sanction. But we've seen in the past already that there can be changes. Also we've seen that some other tournaments than us have little problems, not so much success. Some tournaments are sold and resold in the United States. For us, fortunately, this is not envisaged. But we can think that maybe in two, three or four years, because the ATP changed the board, the chief executive officer, some changes might occur. Q. So what are your best memories of this tournament and your worst memories? ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: I have no worst memory. Well, maybe we have to take a new perspective. The worst moment was maybe the injury of the ball boy. But that is so serious, it can't even be put into this context. It has to be considered a part. He had a broken leg. I mean, this is very serious. Otherwise we had other difficult moments with the weather because it was so windy. I've never seen that before. Even surfers were out there on the Mediterranean on Sunday. This happened Sunday at noon, but after that the weather was fine. Also a good memory was those beautiful matches we have like Ferrero/Tsonga that was played on a very high level. Also things that happened outside the court, the party, the lounge party and the private evening for the players. I was also very pleased with the attendance from Wednesday on, the stadium was full. Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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