Top world players to participate in Mumbai ATP event from Sep 25

Mumbai, Sep 9 (UNI) The first ATP tour event in Mumbai will see six of the best 20 players in the world vying for top honours in the 380,000 dollar Mumbai Open beginning from September 25 at the Cricket Club of India courts here.

World number five Tommy Robredo of Spain, number nine Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic, number 12 Mario Ancic of Croatia, number 14 Thomas Berdych of Czech Republic and number 20 Nicolas Kiefer have confirmed their participation.

Former world number one and French Open champion Carlos Moya and England's Greg Rudeski will also participate in the tournament.

Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes will also play in the doubles, but with different partners.

The seven-day event also received a big boost yesterday when Kingfisher Airlines signed a three-year title sponsorship deal with Globosport, the organisers of the event.

The tournament will now be known as Kingfisher Airlines Tennis Open. This was announced at a press conference last evening in the presence of Kingfisher Airlines Chairman and CEO Vijay Mallya, Globosport Managing director Mahesh Bhupathi and tournament director Gaurav Natekar.

On the occasion, Bhupathi said, ''Mumbai, the commercial and entertainment capital of the country had been deprived of world class tennis for a long time and the Davis Cup tie which we played back in April against Pakistan just reinforced the following this game has here and therefore we decided to bring this event to Mumbai.'' Bhupathi also said that in the first year as the title sponsors, Kingfisher Airlines would pump Rs 3.5 crore into the event.

Mallya said it was a great privilege for Kingfisher to sponsor the event.

''Tennis is a booming sport in our country and with such world class tournament, people are only going to get more hooked onto this sport,'' he added.

The winner would get a price of 52,000 dollar while the runners-up will be richer by 30,600.

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