Barcelona Open tournament director Tommy Robredo has responded to Patrick Mouratoglou’s claims about tennis being in trouble.
Robredo is a former world number five, who won 12 ATP titles and reached seven Grand Slam quarterfinals in his career before retiring in 2022.
The Spaniard is now the Barcelona Open tournament director, taking over the role from David Ferrer for the first time this year.
As well as managing players’ needs in Barcelona, Robredo has also responded to comments Serena Williams’ former coach Mouratoglou has made about tennis being in ‘deep trouble’.
Barcelona Open tournament director disagrees with Patrick Mouratoglou
Mouratoglou is the founder of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) Tour, which promotes a more unique and faster-paced format of tennis.
This is something that the Frenchman claimed was a solution to the current issues in tennis in a recent Facebook post.
Mouratoglou suggested that younger viewers no longer want to watch full tennis matches anymore and prefer shorter-form content.
The 55-year-old, who has coached Naomi Osaka, Holger Rune and Stefanos Tsitsipas as well as Williams, also believes that the rise of other racket sports like pickleball has also put tennis in ‘deep trouble’.
When Mouratoglou’s comments were relayed to Barcelona Open tournament director Robredo in an interview with CLAY, he strongly disagreed and admitted his confusion at the remarks from the Frenchman.
“Not at all,” said Robredo, disagreeing with Mouratoglou. “The ATP has shown us numbers and they say that the audience has doubled. Sincerely, I don’t know why he says that.”
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Tommy Robredo suggests if both Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner could play the Barcelona Open in the future
In Robredo’s first year as tournament director at the Barcelona Open, the top seeds are Carlos Alcaraz, Lorenzo Musetti, Alex de Minaur and Karen Khachanov.
Alcaraz is a two-time former champion in Barcelona, and Robredo was asked if there was any possibility of both the world number two and Jannik Sinner being at the ATP 500 tournament in the future.
“It can be had, yes, but it is complicated, because the calendar is hard and obviously they come from Indian Wells, Miami, and Monte Carlo,” answered Robredo.
“But our goal is to always have the best draw possible, so we will do the maximum to have the best scenario that we can. But well, those things like Sinner and Alcaraz coming are hard to make happen. There are many themes behind it and the economic plane is also very important.”
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Sinner will begin his third reign after winning the Monte Carlo Masters…
Although Sinner is not playing at the Barcelona Open this year, he could be impacted by Alcaraz’s results at the tournament.
Sinner returned to world number one after winning the Monte Carlo Masters, but Alcaraz could reclaim his spot at the top of the ATP rankings if he wins the Barcelona Open.
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