Love Tennis, Love Miami
The sun-soaked city is the venue for one of the world's top tennis tournaments - with guaranteed sunshine!The Miami Masters or 'The Winter Wimbledon', as it was known at first, was the brainchild of Butch Buchholz, the former director of the Association of Tennis Professionals. His vision was to make Miami the venue for a world-class two week tennis tournament. The first tournament took place in 1985 and it now takes place in March in a purpose built venue with eighteen hard courts in Crandon Park in Key Biscayne, just outside Miami. There are regular daily flights from Heathrow to Miami and the venue is not far from the airport. Crandon Park boasts one of the biggest tennis stadiums in the world, Stadium Court, which seats over 13,000 spectators. This court is the venue for the tournament's final matches.
Since its inception, the tournament has attracted the world's top players and huge crowds. While the Miami Masters are not part of the 'Big Four' Grand Slam tournaments (which are Wimbledon, the French Open, the US Open and the Australian Open), it has for many years been acknowledged as a leading competition in the calendar of tennis's best professional players who tour the world to compete in mandatory events to increase their ranking or seeding. The Masters are on both the men's and women's tours. For the men, the Miami Masters has been an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event since 1990 and, for the women, it has been classed as a Premier Mandatory tournament since 2000.
