Torrential rains, surprising defeats and the crowning of an unknown… nothing went as planned this year at the National Bank Open. After this series of twists and turns, the Montreal tournament will have to raise its game a notch in preparation for next year.
The 2023 Open was a real organizational headache because of the weather. And at the close of the 2024 edition on Monday, tournament director Valérie Tétreault laughed bitterly. “Before this tournament, many told me that it couldn’t be worse than last year. So it’s their fault. They shouldn’t have mentioned it!”
Friday’s deluge wasn’t the only downpour. In all, seven of the nine days of competition were interrupted or disrupted by a field that was too wet to play. The scramble to reshuffle the schedule still allowed Tennis Canada to record an almost unprecedented level of attendance. Some 227,000 fans attended one or the other of the matches, just shy of the 2022 record of 237,000. All this, while the Olympic Games were simultaneously capturing the attention of tennis fans.
“It wasn’t easy,” the director admitted. “We tried to navigate through all of this and the ATP itself said we were able to organize three sessions in one day. That’s unheard of. We were very creative.”
Creative, they will have to remain so. The format of this annual meeting will be transformed in 2025 to resemble that of a Grand Slam tournament. This one will last 12 days and will include 96 players, against 9 days and 56 players currently.
The expanded schedule will provide more flexibility, but it is assumed that sudden rain would further complicate ticket refunds, international TV coverage, and athlete training hours. Still without a plan to build a roof over center court, the Omnium will have to come up with even more ingenuity.
It’s not just rain clouds that darken the future of the flagship of Quebec tennis. Tectonic plates are shifting on the tennis planet and the shadow of Saudi Arabia also hangs over Montreal. The wealthy Persian Gulf country bought the next three editions of the Women’s Masters this year and makes no secret of its ambitions to swallow up other tournaments. Meanwhile, the Montreal Open is held by a non-profit organization. The Canadian Masters 1000 is not yet threatened, but a game plan is needed to avoid ending up downgraded.
An unexpected victory
On the court, too, surprises followed one after the other all week. First, all six Canadian players in the running were eliminated from the draw in the first round. Félix Auger-Aliassime, welcomed as a hero and with a bronze medal at the Olympic Games, could not overcome his fatigue and only offered shaky tennis.
It’s more like 62e world champion, the unknown Alexei Popyrin, who fought his way through the events to finally win the top honors. The 25-year-old Australian dominated Russia’s Andrey Rublev in two sets of 6-2, 6-4 on Monday.
The surprise was total. He had never won a Masters 1000 before and was facing a player from top-10 world — a third this week. He himself wasn’t quite sure how to explain the win. “What just happened?” he wrote on the camera lens after his victory.
For the 2025 edition, we now ask ourselves: “What will happen?”