Marat Schedule News Thread

[justsafin]

Marat is playing Thailand Open 2008

www.thailandopen.org/news_detail.php?nid=5&lang=eng
Date: 14 July 2008

ATP Thailand Open 2008 promises great tennis action


The world’s most exciting player, world #3 Novak Djokovic will lead the field at the Thailand Open 2008 which will be held at Impact Arena, Muang Thong Thani from September 21 to 28.

The world’s most exciting player, world #3 Novak Djokovic will lead the field at the Thailand Open 2008 which will be held at Impact Arena, Muang Thong Thani from September 21 to 28.

Australian Open champion Djokovic will be joined by two-time Grand Slam champion Marat Safin and Australian Open runner up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as well as the return of Thailand’s Paradorn Srichaphan to top tennis in the singles draw. In the doubles, local heroes and defending champions Sonchat and Sanchai Ratiwatana will be back to defend their first ATP Tour title.

Djokovic is looking forward to a good showing at the tournament. “I remember my last trip to Bangkok to play in the Thailand Open. I was only 17 and ranked #248 in the world. It was only my third ATP Tour event. I’m really looking forward to playing the Thailand Open again this year,” added Djokovic.

Crowd favorite Safin has enjoyed a resurgent 2008 and will be making his third appearance at the Thailand Open. He made the semi-finals in 2004 and 2006 and has proved a big hit with Thai fans on both occasions. “I always like playing the Thailand Open and I’m looking forward to another good tournament this year,” Safin said.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has been the breakout star of 2008 reaching the final of the Australian Open – beating Gasquet, Murray and Nadal along the way – and seeing his ranking jump from #212 at the beginning of 2007 to #13. The irrepressible Frenchman will be making his first appearance at the Thailand Open.

Paradorn is aiming to put 18 months out with injury behind him with a return to top tennis in his home tournament. "My entire attention now focuses on the fitness, preparation and performing well for the tournament this year," Paradorn said. “I long for that feeling where I walk down the stairs and onto the tennis court surrounded by Thais,” he added.

Last year’s surprise doubles winners, Sonchat and Sanchai Ratiwatana have gone on to further success in 2008 winning their second ATP Tour title in Chennai and reaching the finals in Memphis. They are keen to defend their title this year and hope for the same support they enjoyed last year. “We would like fans to come join and support us at this year’s Thailand Open,” Sonchat said.

BEC Tero Entertainment Public Co. Ltd. is once again proud to stage the only ATP Tour event in Southeast Asia and is offering last year’s ticket holders special discounts in 2008. Ticket holders from the Thailand Open 2007 will enjoy a 25% discount on tickets purchased for this year’s event. To receive the discount, just bring your purchased tickets from last year to any branch of Thaiticketmajor.

This year tennis fans will also be able to purchase a new category of premium seats that will enable them to get closer to all the great tennis action.

Tickets for the Thailand Open start at just Bt300 and are available at all Thaiticketmajor outlets from Saturday July 19. VIP Box seats are already on sale. Call 02 262 3456 or log on to www.thailandopen.org or www.thaiticketmajor.com for more details.

[Natasha]

anyone know what his schedule is after the Us open?

[mar!e]

this the schudule for the rest of the year (is in the os)


19-21 Sep Davis Cup Russia v Argentina Semi Finals Buenos Aires
22-28 Sep Thailand Open Bangkok
13-19 Oct Mutua Madrilena Masters Madrid
20 - 26 Oct St Petersburg Open St Petersburg
27 Oct-2 Nov BNP Paribas Masters Paris

[SAFINNO1]

Kremlin Cup needs to be added too

Notice in the direct 23 - 14 are either French or Russians

The French must really love the frequent trips theyve had to moscow in the recent DC encounters

[davis]

The Entry List for Kremlin Cup is out. As usual, I'm not too impressed with the line-up since I'm not the biggest fan of all the Russian players (with one notable exception of course, LOL). But - like with Andy Murray last year - they have a little "exoctic" addition with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Funny to see: The top 8 players right now are ALL Russian or French...

1 Davydenko, Nikolay RUS 5
2 Tsonga, Jo-Wilfried FRA 19
3 Youzhny, Mikhail RUS 21
4 Andreev, Igor RUS 23
5 Mathieu, Paul-Henri FRA 25
6 Tursunov, Dmitry RUS 27
7 Llodra, Michael FRA 38
8 Safin, Marat RUS 44
9 Tipsarevic, Janko SRB 45
10 Hanescu, Victor ROU 54
11 Benneteau, Julien FRA 57
12 Santoro, Fabrice FRA 60
13 Ginepri, Robby USA 61
14 Devilder, Nicolas FRA 63
15 Garcia-Lopez, Guillermo ESP 67
16 Serra, Florent FRA 69
17 Troicki, Viktor SRB 71
18 Kunitsyn, Igor RUS 72
19 Lu, Yen-Hsun TPE 73
20 Gremelmayr, Denis GER 74
21 Sela, Dudi ISR 76
22 Starace, Potito ITA 77
23 Chardy, Jeremy FRA 80

I know there will be a huge group of tgfr-ladies, so have fun girls!

[SAFINNO1]

Roger Federer to play in eight-man warmup tournament before Australian Open
38 minutes ago

MELBOURNE, Australia — Roger Federer will join former Australian Open champion Marat Safin and 2006 finalist Marcos Baghdatis in the eight-man Kooyong invitational tournament the week before the season's first Grand Slam in January.

Federer missed this year's Kooyong event this year with a stomach virus, and lost in the semifinals at the Australian Open to Novak Djokovic. Federer went on to lose his No. 1 ranking to Rafael Nadal after the Spaniard beat him in the French Open and Wimbledon finals.

Safin won the Australian Open in 2005. Others confirmed to play at Kooyong - the former home of the Australian Open before it moved to Melbourne Park - from Jan. 14 to 17 are Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka, American James Blake, Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Latvian Ernests Gulbis.

The eighth player will be named later, said tournament director Colin Stubs.

The tournament attracts top players by offering guaranteed matches in the round-robin format ahead of the Australian Open rather than the risk of elimination in other lead-up tournaments. Stubs said Thursday he believes Nadal plans to rest the week before the Australian Open, which runs from Jan. 19 to Feb. 1.

"At the moment Nadal is probably going to do that although he's got a fairly good reason, he's got some bad knee problems and he doesn't want to extend himself physically a week before a Grand Slam, which is fair enough," said Stubs.

[maratsmaiden]

I just found this article - Marat is playing in this tournament in November? Looks like exhibition, but, I'm still surprised...

Tennis Extravaganza Hits Penang, Malaysia
Posted: 2008/11/10
From: Mathaba

Working day and night to ready tennis courts for the tournament

Mathaba - For the first time ever a tournament featuring former world number ones in Tennis is being staged and George Town in the beautiful island of Penang and designated as a World Heritage City by UNESCO, seems to be the perfect place to hold its first edition. Dubbed as 'Kings of Tennis' Big Bang Penang, it is being held from 14th-16th November, 2008 at the scenic Esplanade in Georgetown, Penang.

Be ready to witness a keen battle between Tennis greats like John McEnroe, Marcelo Rios and Pete Sampras from America and captained by Australia’s Roy Emerson and Europe’s Bjorn Borg, Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander, captained by the all time Romanian great, Ilie Nastase. Both teams will have one extra player - battle hardened Jim Courier from America and enigmatic once-upon-a-time big-serving Russian Tennis prodigy, Marat Safin.

Will style and grace of John McEnroe’s volleys triumph over the booming service of Marat Safin or the impeccable serve and volley tennis of Stefan Edberg triumph over strong-serving Pete Sampras, still the holder of maximum numbers of Grand Slam singles titles among men. And the best part will be to relive the famous Bjorg-McEnroe rivalry. Definitely a sumptuous fare for all those tennis fans who were either not born or were too young when these greats ruled the courts.

The event is interestingly planned to bring out the drama among these Tennis Hall of Fame players who have enthralled the audiences across the world in the last 4 decades. On the first two days of the event, there will be two singles matches and one doubles match respectively while on the final day there will be four singles matches. This three-day event will be staged on a temporary tennis court with a 13,000 seating capacity. The court and the seating arrangements are almost ready and the overhead spot lights are being tested.

THE 'King of Tennis' showdown in Penang has been sanctioned by the Lawn Tennis Association of Malaysia (LTAM) and the endorsement came two weeks ago. There has been rumors of the tournament been cancelled but according to our reliable sources this unique battle of titans is on and will be held as per the schedule.

National chief coach, Rahizam Rahim said the tournament organizers were initially unaware of the need to get sanctioning from the LTAM when they revealed details of the event early last month. "After realizing their mistake, the tournament's producers Lasse Olsson and Urban Johansson met LTAM president Datuk Abdul Razak Latiff to get the endorsement," said Rahizam yesterday.

The tournament schedule is as follows:

Friday, 14th November, 2008
3.00 pm Gate Opens
5.00 pm M. Wilander vs J. Courier
6.30 pm M. Safin vs M.Rios
8.00 pm S. Edberg-B Bjorg vs P. Sampras-J. McEnroe

Saturday, 15th November, 2008
2.00 pm Gate Opens
4.00 pm M. Safin-M. Wilander vs M. Rios-J. Courier
5.30 pm B. Borg vs J McEnroe
8.00 pm S. Edberg vs P. Sampras

Sunday, 17th November, 2008
1.00 pm Gate Opens
3.00 pm M. Wilander vs J. McEnroe
4.30 pm B. Bjorg vs J. Courier
6.00 pm S. Edberg vs M. Rios
7.30 pm M. Safin vs P. Sampras

mathaba.net/news/?x=611115

[justsafin]

WOW, that's quite surprising! Nothing was mentioned in the OS........

One more thing, Marat seems to be the only one not retired...how come?

[Dina]

Does it mean smthg we didn't get yet? How funny if he actually does lose to all these guys? Because they can all REALLY beat him! That won't do any good to his shaky-inexistant confidence! whatever it might be nice to see him again we're missing him!

[luxsword]

He's getting ready for the senior tour already... lol

[maryb]

For gawd's sake. He's run off to join the seniors? I would have been less stunned by the circus to be honest.

Big Yin, what are you up to? Get a grip and focus on your last year on the tour. Gawd, I feel a headache coming on.

FG

PS If it's true Big Yin, put in a good word for me with Nastase. I will happily mop his brow. ;D

[wendy]

the os saids he is not made up his mind about anything still on holidays .and he will not be appearing .

[maryb]

Complete utter baloney. He isn't on the seniors tour ... not yet, anyway.

Good. ;D



OS statement:
I have just had confirmation from Amit who said as far as he knew this exhibition was cancelled and anyhow Marat was never even meant to be appearing in it.

If he had been it would have been on his schedule.

So sorry guys we are still waiting for Marat to finish his vacation and to make his decisions.

[maratsmaiden]

weird... more news discussing Marat playing in January... this was on ABC Australia and another Australian sports site - sportal.com.au. I am just posting what I find here, not confirming anything, hope that's ok, just trying to keep everyone up to date on what I'm reading out there

sportal.com.au/tennis-news-display/cilic-rounds-out-field-60279

Cilic rounds out Kooyong line-up

Posted Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:40am AEDT

* Map: Melbourne 3000

Croatian Marin Cilic is the final player to be confirmed in the field for this summer's Kooyong Classic in Melbourne.

Cilic, 20, reached the fourth round at this year's Australian Open and won his first ATP title at New Haven in August.

The world number 22 joins a field including world number two Roger Federer, James Blake and Marat Safin for the round-robin event at Kooyong in January.

Also found another article here which says the same thing:
sportal.com.au/tennis-news-display/cilic-rounds-out-field-60279

I'm hoping all this talk of him being in tournaments is a good thing!!!

[Anne]

Nalbandian drops Malaga tournament
Argentine player David Nalbandian decided not to attend Malaga Master Internacional to be held on December 5-7. He will be replaced by French Gael Monfils.
French Gael Monfils, world-ranked no. 14, will replace Argentine player David Nalbandian, who decided not to take part in Malaga Master Internacional; the tournament will be held on December 5-7 at Jose Maria Martin Carpena sports complex.

Nalbandian declined to attend the event because it seems he's not on a good frame of mind after losing Davis Cup final to Spain in Mar del Plata last week, according to the organizers.

This season, Monfils was runner-up in ATP Vienna, the French Open, Nottingham and Bangkok, reached quarterfinals in 2008 Beijing Olympics and MS Madrid.

Therefore, the final draw will show some changes for new top-seeded players are David Ferrer and Feliciano Lopez, two of the Spanish players who clinched Davis Cup. They will play semifinals directly.

Gael Monfils, Carlos Moya, Juan Carlos Ferrero and Russian Marat Safin will play in the round before the semifinals.

FROM: www.sportsya.com/english/news.php/David_Nalbandian_misses_Malaga_Master_Internacional_Gael_Monfils_replaces_him.html?id_estruc=283&id=194781