THE BALL WAS IN …. LIVERPOOL - CELEBRATING 21 YEARS OF THE LIVERPOOL INTERNATIONAL TENNIS TOURNAMENT
THE BALL WAS IN …. LIVERPOOL - CELEBRATING 21 YEARS OF THE LIVERPOOL INTERNATIONAL TENNIS TOURNAMENT
Liverpool has always been well known for its sporting prowess , but back in 2002 , tennis wasn ’ t hugely in the running .
Fast forward to 2023 and we ’ ve seen many international stars hit the courts at Calderstones Park , and now at Liverpool Cricket Club , with hundreds of children taking up the sport on the back of the annual event .
We caught up with the man behind it all , Tournament Director Anders Borg , who came up with the original idea for the Liverpool International Tennis Tournament and who is busy with final preparations for this year ’ s event later this month .
How did it all begin ? I had this idea to bring tennis out of the sort of Southern snobbish environment . We wanted to bring tennis out to the people , and we were looking for public parks across England to hold a tournament in . I came to Liverpool , and saw Calderstones Park , I thought this would be the perfect venue to bring tennis to new places . The first year we had the then world number one and former US Open champion , Marat Safin signed up and that created a lot of excitement over this new tournament coming to Liverpool . Local people gave us great support and flocked to Calderstones Park where Safin didn ’ t let them down and lifted the inaugural trophy .
What are some of the big memorable moments for you over the last 21 years ? I think the biggest one has got to be when John McEnroe visited us . He walked out onto the centre court in front of a capacity crowd wearing an Everton shirt . Half the crowd were cheering , and half of the crowd were boo-ing ! He was fantastic , he was like a rock star , so I have great memories of that . There are lots of great moments . We ’ ve had some fantastic names over the years . Ivan Ljubicic , Martina Navratilova , Greg Rusedski , Martina Hingis , Virginia Wade , Caroline Wozniacki , Bjorn Borg , who was supposed to play but had injured himself the day before . We ’ ve been incredibly lucky to have had all these players involved .
You ’ ve had a lot of up-and-coming players as well haven ’ t you - a kind of you saw them here first situation ? Yes , after the first year , we thought it would be good to focus on players that were working their way up to the number one ranking and in 2004 and 2005 we had Novak Djokovic as a 17-year-old . Of course , he went on to become one of the greatest of all time , so that started us on that path . Another player was Emma Raducanu – who was actually born the year the Liverpool tournament started - she came to Liverpool in 2015 and won one of our junior events and has obviously gone on to great things . We have an impressive track record of finding young and up and coming players who have later hit the big time . We had Caroline Wozniacki the Danish player who was 17 the first time she played in the competition and went on to be ranked number one in the world . It ’ s something that the tournament has become particularly famous for , and we ’ re very proud of . I think it ’ s lovely for people to see them in Liverpool and then later realise who they saw .
The event is now held at Liverpool Cricket Club having moved from Calderstones Park , when did you move and why ? We moved to Liverpool Cricket Club in 2014 after 11 great years at Calderstones . That was the year Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli and the legends that are Greg Rusedski and Virginia Wade joined us , so it was a big year for us . The club was chosen to treat the tennis competition as a warm-up for Wimbledon . The cricket club ’ s last tennis competition – before us - had taken place 60 years after the Wimbledon legend Lottie Dod appeared there in 1892 . The world ’ s leading stars of the 1950 ’ s , Lew Hoad , Ken Rosewall and Pancho Gonzalez had played an exhibition on a court constructed in front of the pavilion . It was a big decision to move . We had sort of grown out of Calderstones a little bit . With it being a public park , the ground was never completely flat , so we always had the challenge of dealing with the slope and the cricket club was in a confined area , which made it - it was easier to manage the security of the event .
There ’ s a lot more to the International Tennis Tournament that just the exhibition event though isn ’ t there ? We are currently organising six International Junior Tournaments throughout the year and Liverpool has become a hub for international junior tournaments . That ’ s all happened off the back of the main exhibition event , so it really put Liverpool on the map for international tennis which is something we are really proud of . We have added on six weeks of international tennis tournaments at the Liverpool Tennis Centre in Wavertree . They take place in November and February and see more than 750 players , coaches , parents , and officials from all over Europe and Britain arrive here . We arrange events in Norway and England so I ’ m travelling back and forth a lot , but for the next six weeks I am an official scouser .
Tickets are still available for the 2023 Liverpool International Tennis Tournament taking place between 22-24 June at Liverpool Cricket Club – you can get yours here : https :// liverpooltennis . co . uk /
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