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MONTE-CARLO ROLEX MASTERSApril 17, 2011Zeljko FranulovicMONTE CARLO, MONACO ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: Good morning and welcome to this press briefing at the end of the tournament. It is a good opportunity for me to tell you on behalf of the tournament direction and committee that we thank you for your loyalty. I will now give you the results of this 105th edition of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters: First I will talk about the various events that have been marking this edition. As the tradition says, our tournament proposed during the week various social events. First we have the Players' Evening. As usual, many players participated in this evening. One after the other, they went on the stage and they demonstrated that they were not only high-level athletes but real artists and comedians. I would like to remind you that this special evening event is exclusively reserved for the players. This is exclusive to our tournament for the past 60 years. We are really determined to keep that special part of our tournament. We also had 'La Grande Nuit du Tennis' that was organized with the Spanish company Antonio Najarro and the participation of singer Luz Casal. This was to pay a tribute to the 14 victories of Hispanic players in our tournament since the Open Era. The tournament committee also focused on increasing the number of activities outside of the courts. On Monday, for example, for the Woman's Day, an exhibition match on center court was organized between the Danish player Caroline Wozniacki, who is presently No. 1 in the world, and the Italian player Francesca Schiavone, who was the winner of the French Open in 2010. That was a true delight for our female public and for everyone else. Also a very important moment in our tournament was the audience that his Serene Highness Albert of Monaco gave to Rafael Nadal in the private garden of the Prince's palace on Sunday the 10th of April. The day before, Tomas Berdych was able to discover sailing onboard a yacht called 'Tuiga', which is the admiral vessel of the Yacht Club of Monaco. With the participation of 8 out of 10 top players in the world, we were blessed once again with an exceptional draw. I would like to remind you that just one week before the tournament, we reached the record figure of 10 out of 10. Unfortunately, Novak Djokovic and Robin Soderling had to pull out of because of injuries. We must say that Novak, who is a Monaco resident, stayed with us the whole week. Apparently his knee is now getting better and he's starting to practice little by little again. We wish him, as well as Robin, to get better very soon. I would like also to take this opportunity to thank once again all the players who showed time and again how this tournament was very dear to them and how they are attached to this tournament. The success of this 105th edition was confirmed because the record figure we had before of 124,000 spectators was broken. This year we had 125,000 spectators. We are extremely satisfied with this public attendance. From now on, this figure will be the benchmark for future editions. We also were able to see that there was a strong increase in the public relations packages. They were doubled compared with 2010. We also had a great success with the boxes, 272 boxes. All of them were booked long before the tournament. Also, online reservations was a great success. Thanks to that, we were able to, in fact, close the sales of center court tickets one month before the tournament. We had connection peaks at 3600 simultaneous orders. A direct consequence of those online sales was that we had this year a more international public, from the United States, from the United Kingdom, from eastern Europe, from Nordic countries and Spain. That internationalization also happened with the media coverage. We had, for example, a press trip that was organized with 15 Chinese media. It was organized by our title sponsor, Rolex. Another example is the Spanish journalists from Lifestyle Magazine who came thanks to the initiative of Façonnable. But the main thing: The press tennis tournament organized in cooperation with Dunlop this year. We had 15 players, not only men, but also women. We can say 2011 was 'under the charm of women'. Once again, I would like to thank all of you very warmly and would like to make an appointment with you for the next edition of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters which will take place from the 14th to the 22nd of April 2012. Before giving the floor away, I am available if you have any questions or I will be available for individual questions. Q. Can you tell us about yesterday afternoon. I suppose with the Murray injury, you were a bit under pressure. ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: Yes, it was a very stressful afternoon. We are hostages of the players' injuries mainly. Andy, the day before, had nothing. The next morning he woke up and he came here saying, I really have a pain in my elbow. The first thing we did, of course, was to tell him to see the doctors. This is when we were able to confirm that our medical team is really first class. Well, I'm just saying this in a few words, but it took a lot of time to convince Andy to get treatment for his elbow. After many examinations, he accepted to have the injection. The match had been announced already, but he took time and in the end he said, Okay, I'm going to play. It was 3:00. It was time for the match. At 3:00 he said, But first, I want to go and check whether I can play or not. So he went on an outside court and hit some balls. Finally in the end not only did he say, Okay, I'll play, but he played a beautiful match. So that was a bit lucky for us. Q. I would like to say thank you, first of all, to everyone, to the people from the welcome desk who are all very nice for all the tournament. I would like to say that the organization has improved in many sectors all over. Also I would like to ask whether there are new projects for the following years, for next year, what you have in mind. Every year brings new lessons and experiences to learn from. Also I would like to mention the problem we have with the photographers in the press room here. Of course, sometimes it's a bit cold outside, it's windy, and they have to open the windows to take photos. I understand it's difficult to solve, but we should maybe be able to find something, maybe not open all the windows at the same time. But there are many improvements that have been made already, for example, the lockers are now much better, et cetera. ZELJKO FRANULOVIC: The investments and the future projects, first I want to say that one year we will have to stop because we are dealing with a limited site and surface, and therefore we can't keep digging and building up forever. We built the new stands around the center court, but we lost parking spaces, so we have to build new parking slots. Also we realized our village was getting too small because we have many more sponsors. Thank you to our sponsors, but we had to increase the village. We tried to improve the press center with better wi-fi. It's all over. That was a technological challenge. It was difficult for Monaco Telecom to have the wi-fi work well. I will maybe give you a secret. Now what we can do, because we can still dig a little bit, we'll dig under the stands so we can create some offices for the ballboys, for the officials, which would spare other spaces for something else. But now we are going to focus on improving the quality rather than the quantity because we can't grow forever. About the window problems with the photographers, Mr. Rialland has something in mind. I'll take note of this, we'll think about it and try to find a solution. Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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