Córdoba Open’s farewell to ATP tournaments confirmed: what the tour of South America will be like in 2025

It doesn’t go any further. Less than a month after the Italian-Argentine Luciano Darderi had surprised the world with his overwhelming tennis and had crowned himself champion of the ATP 250 in Córdoba, after having passed the qualification and beaten Facundo Bagnis in the final, the tournament that dispute from 2019 to Him Mario Alberto Kempes sports polo He died shortly after birth and will no longer be part of the South American tour.

This has been confirmed Jorge Salkeld, Peruvian tennis player (he was 440 in the world in 1984) and vice president of Octagonthe American company that owned the defunct competition. “Next year Córdoba will leave the calendar and what we have now will be maintained, which is Buenos Aires, Río and Santiago,” Salkeld spoke out in an interview with the Chilean newspaper La Tercera.

Like Darderi, who achieved only one victory on the big tennis circuit before his glorious week which allowed him to make the leap into the Top 100, the Córdoba tournament was the scene of other surprise coronations such as that of Juan Ignacio Lóndero in the inaugural edition or that of Juan Manuel Cerúndolo in 2021.

The Chilean also lifted the trophy Cristiano Garin in 2020, the Spanish Alberto Ramos Vinole (2022) e Sebastiano Baez last season. A date chosen by South American tennis players in view of the Argentina Open, but also by some Spaniards who agree with the orange surface, quickly goes down in history.

While the ATP 250 in Buenos Aires called up three Grand Slam champions Carlos Alcaraz, Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic and pushing hard to move up to the 500 category, Córdoba failed to attract the big racquet personalities who played Lawn Tennis the following week, which resulted in a lack of audience in the stands.

This is one of the main explanations for the loss of the Córdoba tournament, added to which is the high cost of installing the tournament’s tubular stands. central court. In this way, what was an open secret was confirmed yesterday with Salkeld’s statements The ATP has not yet released an official statement.

The governing body of men’s tennis had revealed its plans to make changes to the 2025 calendar. There are plans to merge the ATP 250 into 500 and thus extend the duration of the Masters 1000 in Madrid, Rome, Cincinnati and Shanghai. There are no definitions in this regard yet, but a stop in our country can now be ruled out.

This is a significant loss for South American tennis in general, as this tour that has taken up all of February in recent years has been, and will continue to be, to a lesser extent, an opportunity for tennis players from the region to establish themselves in the ranking and take care of yourself for the rest of the season. Cordoba will no longer be. That leaves Buenos Aires, Rio and Santiago.