"Going to the Ordina Open tennis tournament" Rosmalen by Kid-A

Congratulations to Ivan Ljubicic and Anna Chakvetadze: the winners of the 2007 Ordina Open!

I've created this page to give you more information on getting to the best little grass court tournament I know of.

Advertised as the only international grass tennis tournament of The Netherlands, the Ordina Open takes place at the Autotron in Rosmalen. It is a Tier 3 tournament on the ATP and WTA schedules. It occurs the week prior to Wimbledon, so many players use it as a warm up event as they get off the clay and begin the short grass court season prior to the American hard court summer.

This year on the men's side, the big-name players included Ivan Ljubicic, Tommy Robredo, Marcos Baghdatis and Juan Carlos Ferrero.

On the women's side, defending champ and hometown Dutchy favorite Michaella Krajicek was there, along with French Open runner up Ana Ivanovic, and fellow Serb Jelena Jankovic, Russians Anna Chakvetadze (had to check the spelling on that one twice) and Dinara Safina, and Slovak Daniela Hantuchova and India's Sania Mirza.

This was my second year in a row attending the tournament, and it has fast become one of my favorites!

Check out the official tournament site -- www.ordinaopen.nl -- for more information.

And check out my travelogue photos of some of the players I saw. It's strange that I only ended up photographing players with last names ending in "ic." It wasn't intentional -- weird?!?!

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The rains interupted play significantly this week!

Of course, rain and wet grass make play impossible, so suspensions occured at various times this week. Luckily, there were intermittent patches of sunshine and the rains were short enough not to make the delays too long. However, there were some significant interruptions. I think the luckiest person in the tournament was Ljubicic, who played the first match both Thursday and Friday, and had no delays.

Autotron, not to be confused with the crematorium!

The Autotron in Rosmalen is like a fair grounds. It is well known in the area and there are many signs to direct you in the correct way. I was driving from Breda, so I drove direction s'Hertogenbosch. Rosmalen is very close by. Also, there are buses available to the Autotron in Rosmalen from the main train station of s'Hertogenbosch.

• Pros:You can get closer to the players at this small, intimate tournament
• Cons:Rain halts tennis!