ATP "Next Generation” (the stars of the future tour) player, Danill Medvedev, 21, from Russia, is ranked number 48 on the ATP tour. During Family Day at the Citi Open tournament, he took time from his practice to hit with youths in the Tecnifibre clinic. Photo by Carole Dell/The Almanac
The Citi Open tennis tournament is over, the winners, Alexander Zverev and Ekaterina Makarova have moved on to their next tournaments, the site and its colorful kiosks are dismantled, the park police are gone and the stadium empty. But the camaraderie continues, forged during the weeks of work by the volunteers and staff that made the event possible. That will live on for next year, the tournament’s 50th anniversary.
More than 76,380 fans crowded the stands during the seven days from May 29 through Aug. 6, to watch the men and women compete in the only co-ed 500 Series Event in America. The men, who are members of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the women, members of their own union, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) compete in the Citi Open for a total player compensation of $2.5 million, a far cry from 1969, when the first tournament, then called The Washington Star, offered prize money of $25,000. The players, men only at that time, had to shower and change, not in locker rooms, but in tents, and they stayed, not in hotels, but in private homes. Thomas Koch, from Brazil, won that year.
There was no television broadcasts back then, but today, fans can watch over 170 hours of the Citi Open tennis live nationwide and 4,000 hours from 182 countries overseas.
And, Citi’s winner, Zverev, who is 20-years-old and from Germany, won again at the Canadian Open in Montreal beating Roger Federer on Aug. 13. This was Zverev's sixth win in the past 11 months, making him the first player to qualify for the ATP "Next Gen" finals in November in Milan. Next Gen is the inaugural tour of under 21 players who are ranked in the top 200 and are billed as the “Next Generation" of stars on the ATP World Tour.
Carole Dell’s husband, Donald, is co-founder and chairman of the Citi Open Tennis Tournament.