The biggest women's tournament in Slovakia ITF EMPIRE Slovak Open (2nd – 10th May 2015) will grow again. Raising prize money up to 100 000 USD so far will means better quality list of players who arrive to Trnava and TC EMPIRE Club on Hajdoczy´s street.
EMPIRE Slovak Open held on clay in May has the potential to become the biggest Slovak women's tournament in history. It's prize money is still raising. At the end of the first year, it had been 25 000 USD. In 2011, it was twice the size. Two years ago and last year, there were 75 000 USD which was divided to players and tournament was again called International Championship of Slovakia. This will repeat during the upcoming 7th year, but at the same time, prize money will raise on 100 000 USD. "We want to have even better players here and maybe even the players from TOP 50 of WTA rankings. Players could fight for more points before the start of Roland Garros Grand Slam. Singles winner will earn 140 points and runner-up 85 points. We're going to increase the attractivity of the tournament for fans arriving here to hear some famous tennis names not only from Slovakia," says Oto Majba, the manager of EMPIRE Slovak Open.
Tennis players could be attracted by the fact, that right before tournament in Trnava, there will be the WTA tournament in Prague called Sparta Prague Open. It's an unspoken rule that players love to choose the tournaments held close to each other (Trnava - Praha) in a short time.
EMPIRE Slovak Open 2015 is classified as an ITF category, the only higher ones are the WTA tournaments. But these events have at least 250 000 USD prize money. Is it possible that this tournament will be in that situation one day? „For now, we don't plan it, but players, including famous Czech Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova, often used to tell us that organization of this tournament is one of the best they had ever seen. It's on the WTA tournaments level," confirms Majba. In Trnava, there were many famous names of women tennis including last year's winner Anna Karolina Schmiedlova, Jana Cepelova and Olympic medalist Lucia Hradecka, Jovana Jaksic, Julia Glushko or Simona Halep, the current top 10 player from Romania.