The Turkish city of Antalya will host a brand new ATP 250 tournament from 2017 onwards.
The new grass court tournament will take place at the extravagant Kaya Palazzo Belek resort, a venue that already has a 18 hole golf course as well as a 200 meter private beach. Seven new courts will be built for the tournament and the construction of the courts will be done in partnership with the All England Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon.
Antalya will be the seventh ATP tournament to host a grass court event in 2017. The addition of the event comes following the increase of the gap between the French Open and Wimbledon to three weeks. The new Turkish tournament will have a prize pool of €481,615 and will feature a 28-player main draw singles tournament and 16 for the doubles.
Turkey will now be hosting two tournaments after the introduction of the Istanbul Open in 2015. The President of the Turkish Tennis Federation, Cengiz Durmuş, has spoken of his delight about hosting the new event.
“The Turkish Tennis Federation is very proud to host one of seven ATP grass-court tournaments with the inaugural Antalya Open in Turkey. We hope to continue to grow our presence in tennis through our international events and the success of our players. We are pleased to be increasing our cooperation with the ATP.” Mr Durmus said.
The first edition of the tournament will take place between June 25th – July 1st, 2017, a week before the Wimbledon championships.
The expansion of the ATP Tour is Turkey comes as no surprise considering the country’s presence on the lower level of the men’s game. In the first eight months of this year, Turkey will host 32 tournaments on the Futures tour. Last year they also hosted six Challenger tournaments.
According to a 2013 study, tennis is the third most followed sport in Turkey. Only football and Basketball are more popular.
