MONETA Czech Open Policy: Give a Chance to Czechs

The new system is not even perfectly clear to many players. They contacted me in order to find out whether they had been accepted to the tournament or not. Another thing is that the top two hundred has changed a lot. There are many new players who were successful in the last year. The ATP tournament schedule is also very tight, there is lots of competition and the player field had to be enlarged according to the new ITF regulations. There were many players in the qualification rounds in the previous years. This year there are four players: Roman Jebavý, Pavel Nejedlý and Ondřej Válek (WC) of the Czech Republic and Andres Molteni of Argentina. And the main field? There were thirty two players last year while there are forty eight players this year. But still Jarda Levinský did a great job. We wanted to have four top-hundred players in the great tournament competition and we managed to get them. As for the others, some of them have already been in the top fifty and others close to the top hundred.

The top seed is Casper Rud of Norway which really is a great name for the tournament. He lost to Federer 6:8 in tiebreak in the third set in Paris, made it to the quarterfinal in Rome where he was ousted by Del Potro, played the final in Houston, lost to the second-seeded Ramos Vinolas of Spain in the second round at Masters in Madrid. Ramos Vinolas, who is the second seed in our tournament, was in the top fifteen in the past. He played and lost to Nadal in the final in Monte Carlo in 2017. We are happy that the top Czech players traditionally participate in the tournament, only Tomas Berdych is missing owing to his injury. We gave wild cards to Czechs: Lehečka, Kopřiva, Jaloviec, Siniakov, Poljak and Pospíšil. Our junior Ondra Válek also got one for the qualification. Some of them, for instance the sixteen-year-old Dan Siniakov, will primarily gain experience here. However, it is mainly a great chance for them to play at such a large tournament. It also proves our tournament policy: it has always been our intention to have as many Czechs as possible in the tournament,” said Petra Černošková, the tournament director of MONETA Czech Open.