04.06.2012 10:17:00 | The 19th tournament, and Petra Langrova as the tournament director for the 14th time. "Once again, we are expecting an excellent tournament, eleven ATP top hundred players make UniCredit Czech Open by far the best domestic tournament," says Petra Langrova. "Twelve ATP top hundred players have registered for UniCredt Czech Open, three of which Starace (Italy), Malisse (Belgium), and Kubot (Poland) could not come to Hana Region because they are playing at the tournament in Paris. Another ATP top hundred player, Andrejev (Russia) finally withdrew for the reason of injury. Fernando Verdasco (16th ATP ranking), Radek Stepanek (27th) and Florian Mayer (35.) have been granted wild cards, and thus we host eleven ATP top hundred players. Moreover, it is great that except for Tomas, who could not play anyway for being a Top Ten player, all the best Czech players: Stepanek, Rosol, Hajek, and others, have come to Prostejov."
The Saturday evening's draw had no mercy with the top seeds. Florian Mayer (Germany) will face Lukas Rosol in the first round, Ramirez Hidalgo will play Hajek, the only player to have won three titles in Prostejov, in 2006, 2009, and 2010. It will also be tough for Jiri Vesely, who was granted a wild card, since he is to face the 7th seeded Spaniard Garcia Lopez. Moreover, he and Horansky are to play the second-seeded doubles pair. "Jirka really was not very lucky with the draw. On the other hand, you cannot really choose from among such good-quality players,“ the tournament director said.
There is another reason why UniCredit Czech Open in Prostejov appeals to the players: the points won at the tournament may help some of them to qualify for the Olympic Games in London. From this perspective, how should we understand Miroslav Cernosek's, head of the tennis club in Prostejov, and the tournament director's effort to attract a few more stars during the first week of the Paris tournament? "We have not brought anybody else from Paris. We can say that our mission was to make final arrangements with regard to Verdasco's participation, who is the top seed. A novelty this year is that we have entered into a contract with selected players, making sure that if they drop out in singles, they will not play doubles. This is something we never did before and we can say that we lost many attractive players because of their participation in doubles.“
Considering the singles draw, does Petra Langrova have any favorites? "Every director wants to have the first- and the second-seeded players in the finals. It would be great if it was a Czech. The second-seeded Czech player is Radek Stepanek and in that case the central court would really be crowded. It was a great achievement of Petr Lux, the director of the women's tennis UniCredit Czech Open, to have the first and second seeds, Lucka Safarova and Klara Zakopalova respectively, play in the finals."
Wild cards? "It was clear from the begining that Jirka Vesely would be granted one. He has been promised to be granted one many times but he was always playing the junior tournament in Paris at the time of our tournament. We made an advance agreement with Florian Mayer, who also represents us in extra-league, and we wanted Radek Stepanek badly. Radek is a crowd puller. He is very popular in Prostejov; he is a tough fighter, people come to watch his matches, and they like him here,“ said Petra Langrová. "We were seeking an attractive player to be granted the last wild card who has not played here yet. When we started to negotiate with Verdasco, he ranked 36th in the ATP, he was not in a great form. After he jumped to the 16th place, and we feared to get him to Prostejov. Fortunately, he did not "survive" the first Paris week. We also addressed the Argentinian Nalbandian, just in case. He refused because he was to go home immediately after Roland Garros.“
