The Swedish Open, first held in 1948, is an ATP World Tour 250 series tennis tournament held in Bastad in July each year. Each year, the players on the ATP Tour vote for the ATP Tournament of the year and the SkiStar Swedish Open in Bastad has received this honor eight times, winning the International Series Tournament of the year in last 8 years. The clay court event is the first tournament to have won this award eight consecutive years.
Famous Australian champions like Ken Rosewall, Ashley Cooper, Roy Emerson, Martin Mulligan (twice), Dick Crealy and Richard Fromberg have won this tournament. This year the only Australian to play in Sweden is Peter Luczak in singles competition and making a pair with Swedish Andreas Siljestrom. In singles the Aussie was lucky to be scheduled to meet the last player who made directly the main draw, world No. 96th Spaniard Pere Riba. But in the doubles the Australian-Swedish team will have an impossible mission against No. 2 seeds and Wimbledon runners-up, Swedish Robert Lindstedt and Romanian Horia Tecau.
All past Bastad champions from the last four years are top 5 seeds and are back to the SkiStar Swedish Open. Four of the top five seeds are Spanish clay court specialists. Last year, home favorite Robin Soderling became the first Swedish champion in nine years. Eight years in a row this tournament has being won by latin players, five times Spaniards, twice an Argentine and once an Italian.
Top seed Soderling defeated Juan Monaco in straight sets last year in the final and declared it was a “dream come true” to lift the Swedish Open trophy in front of home crowd. The Swede is playing now for the ninth year in a row at Bastad and besides last year when he won, he has been defeated each time by a Spaniard or Argentine opponent. Soderling will defend his title but will again face stiff competition from the “Spanish Armada”.
The No. 2 Seed, world No. 9 Fernando Verdasco has been on form during the Spring European clay-court season and will hope to improve on his previous best effort at Bastad, which was a semi-final two years ago. A title here would mean his third title and his second clay-court title this year after the trophies he won in San Jose and Barcelona a few months ago.
Champion in 2007 and semi-finalist in 2008, the No. 3 seed David Ferrer is one of the leading Spain contenders to win the title here. David Ferrer already won a clay-court title this year at Acapulco and played two more clay-court finals in Rome and Buenos Aires.
There are two more Spaniards with good chances to win the title, or at least achieve great results. The No. 4 seed Nicolas Almagro and the No. 5 seed Tommy Robredo. Almagro was a runner-up here three years ago and Robredo has the best event record with 23 wins and 7 losses – winning this tournament twice in 2006 and 2008.
Verdict: Almagro to be a new Spanish champion at Bastad. Register here to bet.