Tennis Tourist Addition - Rotterdam ABN AMRO Tournament
At the beginning of the year, I learnt that I had far too many annual leave days left to take before the end of March, so I figured I'd better use them rather than lose them. I hadn't been a tennis tourist for several years, due to general issues like life and pandemics getting in the way, so I thought why not take a plunge and go to a tennis tournament abroad. As some of my favourite players were playing in Rotterdam, and it doesn't take 24 hours to get there from the UK, I thought why not make a trip to the ABN AMRO Open tennis tournament.
I therefore went on the tournament website at the beginning of the year and managed to get tickets for all quarter final, semi final sessions and the final itself. As a side note I bought a ticket for the evening session for the Thursday at the beginning of the tournament, but I'll explain more about that later.
Overall the ticket outlay for all these sessions (6 in total) worked out to be just over £300 (slightly more in Euros), which I found to be quite reasonable for an ATP 500 tournament, and several top ten stars taking part. There was also an opportunity to buy like an overall pass for all sessions as well, but I felt that would leave me with the tennis fan equivalent of burnout.
Following the purchase of tickets I was asked to sign up to an app called Close, that stored all my purchased tickets, and also served as a platform to keep me up to date with everything I needed to know about the tournament. To be armed with such information before a tournament, particularly in a country or city you're not overly familiar with, is such a godsend before you even get there. Other events throughout the world would do very well to follow Rotterdam, in preparing fans like this.
How to get to Rotterdam
Coming from the UK, I basically had 2 options to get to Rotterdam. You can fly to Rotterdam The Hague airport from London City airport. Both airports are what the British would describe as tin shed airports, and you would likely be flying in tin shed planes as well, therefore flights sell out and prices spiral very quickly. There is the option of course to fly to Amsterdam Schiphol which is only just over 20 mins on the train from Rotterdam.
I however chose the option to travel by Eurostar from London St Pancras International to Rotterdam Centraal station directly. It took 3 1/2 hours to get there and the moment I reached Rotterdam I was able to get off the train and head straight to my hotel. No passport control to go through, because that already happened at London St Pancras International. It was very much a stress free journey to be honest, except for having to wait in the departure lounge with what seemed like hundreds of parents with kids, heading for Disneyland. Small inconveniences though.
Staying in Rotterdam
Rotterdam has a multitude of options for all kinds of budgets. It would be no understatement to say I am at the lower end of the budget scale when it comes to accommodation, but I like certain comforts as well. I chose to stay at the City Hub Rotterdam. It's kind of a cross between a low budget hotel and high end hostel. You have what I would describe like a submarine cabin (it's better than you think) all to yourself, and access the cleanest bathroom and toilet facilities I think I've ever seen. Beds were ridiculously comfy and were good to come back to following a long day watching tennis. The hotel is literally 10 mins walk (5 mins by tram) from Rotterdam Centraal station as well.
Rotterdam - Should I just go for the tennis?
On the contrary, Rotterdam has a whole lot to offer the tourist other than a major ATP 500 event. Rotterdam has an excellent transport system which seems to get to you to anywhere you want to go by tram, bus, metro and train in minutes, rather than hours. Not forgetting that Rotterdam is Europe's largest port. I'm no architect, but I would also think that Rotterdam would be an architect's dream. The amount of bizarre and wonderful looking buildings are really quite impressive.
I'm sure there are hundreds of countries in the world where you can travel by metro from one major city and be in another major city in just over 30 mins, but I wasn't expecting that whilst travelling to Rotterdam. Den Haag (The Hague), is literally just over 30 mins from Rotterdam on the metro and even better is on the exact same metro line you need to travel to the tennis. So I spent the morning in Den Haag one day and I was watching doubles by 2pm.
So what can one do other than watch tennis in Rotterdam? There is actually quite a lot. I managed to fit in a fair few things in the space of five days. One of the first things I did was take a little boat ride along the river Maas, just to see the enormity of Europe's largest port. Now I won't lie, this boat ride will probably mainly be more attractive to architectural and shipping enthusiasts, but at the same time it does give you some education about the history, scale, and workings of the port as well as some locational points of reference in the city.
In the Blaak area of the city lies two impressive architectural masterpieces. One is the Cubed Houses, and there is no mistaking that these are cubed houses. Incidentally, people do reside in these houses. The other is the Markthal, a rather impressive looking building housing a rather impressive food market, featuring stalls selling food from all corners of the globe and a large Asian food supermarket as well.
On the final day of my trip I also visited Remastered, an experience and a trip quite frankly where famous Dutch artists are reimagined in a digital format. It really is a fascinating and unnerving experience at the same time. I won't show any pictures here because it's something you have to experience first hand really in my opinion.
I barely touched the surface of what is available to see in Rotterdam, but it is important to stress there are other avenues to explore other than a tennis tournament.
So to the tennis - Was it worth going?
The ABN AMRO Open ATP 500 event was actually celebrating it's 50th birthday this year, and you were regularly reminded about the fact. From a personal perspective it was nice to have something older than me in terms of its existence. Anyway, in the cut throat world of ATP tournaments, to have existed for 50 years and not be a Slam or Masters 1000 event, is really quite impressive in the scheme of things, and you have to assume this Rotterdam tournament is doing an awful lot right.
The history of this tournament tells an interesting story, particularly from a geographical perspective. In the 70's and 80's and early 90's there were several American winners of the tournament including Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors and Brad Gilbert. What I didn't know apparently Connors shared the tournament with Lendl in 1984 because there was a bomb scare, although I would imagine Lendl would have been somewhat pissed off because he was leading 6-0 and 1-0 with a break. As we've moved into the 21st century the Rotterdam ATP 500 appears to have become essentially a "European Player" tournament. The introduction of the Latin American Golden Swing and tournaments in USA such as Dallas and Delray Beach, mean many players, such as those outside of Europe and those players that could considered clay court specialists, now have so many other options. A cold week in the middle of Rotterdam, on a somewhat difficult surface, is now not so appealing. So there were only a few non Europeans that chose to infiltrate the singles draw at Rotterdam this year. One Canadian, one Australian, one American and a Korean.
So is it worth attending the Rotterdam tournament? Well that's an interesting question. In terms of a fan experience I found it to be excellent for the most part. Here are some of the reasons why.
1) It's a great atmosphere. The Dutch clearly love their tennis and have been visiting this tournament for 50 odd years.
2) I didn't have to travel to middle of a forest, or a suburb of a city that takes 2 hours to get to. The venue Rotterdam Ahoy is situated in Zuid Plein which is literally 12 minutes by metro to Rotterdam Centraal station.
3) The staff in the complex spoke perfect English (having said that I don't think I have encountered a Dutch person who doesn't speak English to be honest), and were delightful, friendly, and helpful when you needed to speak to them.
4) There was a variety of food outlets to chose from throughout the complex. Now don't get me wrong, it was ridiculously expensive, but I will forgive the tournament based on nowadays any tournament venue you seem to have to spend about the same amount on food as you've paid on the ticket you purchased. I will forgive Rotterdam also, because their chips are absolutely fabulous. On recommendation I tried Kroket in Bread, an interesting but very tasteful experience as well.
5) As well as the main Ahoy arena, there are two other match courts and practice courts which fans can gain easy access to, to see their favourite players close up.
6) If you are into shopping and an interactive experience, you are well and truly catered for in the Sports Plaza, with shops, food trucks and tennis clinics and interactive games. The only thing I thought was lacking was a proper ABN AMRO Open souvenir store. I only learnt after the final that there were some souvenirs in a shop called Quick. I was offered a drinks bottles used by some of the players during the tournament. The only thing identifying them was a label with the players name, but it just felt a bit weird and like it required a certificate of authenticity. On the plus side I did get a souvenir travel bag however for only 5 Euros, which was a bonus.
7) I wasn't aware until I attended this tournament that the ABN AMRO Open is one of the first tournaments outside of Grand Slams, to integrate wheelchair events, both male and female, into their tournament programme. To have the opportunity to see the likes of Alfie Hewitt and Gordon Reid, arguably one of the most successful doubles teams to have ever played wheelchair tennis, was a pure joy. This tournament is clearly an innovator which keeps it going strong.
So the tennis itself. Sometimes it's very hard to be objective when you are a fan of a player and not necessarily a great fan of another player. I'm a big fan of Stefanos Tsitsipas and the way he generally plays tennis. He unfortunately encountered a very on form Jannik Sinner in the 2nd round of the tournament, the very first match I saw. The match turned out to be a bit of a damp squib to be honest. Of course we later learnt a shoulder injury may not have helped Tsitsipas's cause, but the quality of the court surface did seem to affect an awful lot of players, in terms of it being quite slow and having a low bounce.
As an example, Tsitsipas normally shanks shots at least twice a match. This is not uncommon for him and if there was a ranking for quantity of shanks, he'd probably be surpassing the equivalent of Djokovic's 377 weeks at no.1, by the end of his career. Tsitsipas was not the only culprit during the shankathon during this tournament. They were coming from all over the shop. Those players that normally play with a lot of spin and guile, were struggling with this court constantly. This could also be said for the wheelchair doubles guys as well. They were often picking balls up at the bottom of their wheels and often looked like they were attempting a moon ball or lob virtually every point.
The two players that hit what I would describe as a "flatter" ball (Sinner and Medvedev) ended up being in the final, and arguably played the best match of the tournament as well. Seeing Medvedev up close is kind of fascinating. He firstly receives serve in another postcode. His general position and centre of gravity however, is often quite low to the court, because by the time a serve reaches his racket, he's often finds himself more or less at ground level anyway. This court basically suits him to an absolute tee, and fair play to him, he was the deserved winner of the tournament.
So to conclude, if you are looking for the overall experience of an ATP 500 event, you could do far worse than the ABN AMRO Open. The fan experience is highly enjoyable. My only question mark would be the quality of the tennis courts moving forward. I saw a comment from someone on Twitter that some of the European Indoor Courts, just seem to get slower and slower, suiting the a select few as opposed to the majority. My only concern is that if some players start to feel they don't feel competitive on certain courts, they will chose to move to other tournaments or not play at all. That will be a shame for Rotterdam, because as a general tennis fan experience, it's a really good one.
