By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
The Miami Open is about to do something that has only been done one other time in the history of tennis.
The 2019 edition of the tournament will be the first time that the event will be played at Hard Rock Stadium, the home of the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League. It’s also the second time that a tennis event has been held at an NFL stadium. Can you guess the only other time this has happened?
You have to go back to the 1973 “Battle of Sexes” match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in Houston, Texas that was held at the Houston Astrodome, which at the time was the home of the then Houston Oilers NFL franchise. The match featured a crowd of 30,372.
Hard Rock Stadium was created in 1987 and was first known as Joe Robbie Stadium. The facility replaced the old Orange Bowl stadium as the home of the Dolphins as well as the Miami Hurricanes college football team. It also hosted the Florida Marlins baseball team from 1993 to 2011. The stadium has also hosted five Super Bowls, two World Series contests and four college football National Championship Games as well as the annual Orange Bowl college football game. In August of 2016, Hard Rock Café Inc. bought the naming rights for $250 million for 18 years. In 2017, the stadium debuted shaded covers over most of the stands, making it much more fan friendly in the hot South Florida sun.
Hard Rock Stadium is the fourth venue for the Miami Open, which started in 1985 just 42 miles north in Delray Beach, Florida. After one year in Delray Beach, the event moved slightly south to Boca Raton, Florida and then even farther south in 1987 to Key Biscayne, Florida, “finally feeling at home among the palms and mangroves” wrote Bud Collins in “The Bud Collins History of Tennis” book. A new permanent stadium in Key Biscayne was created in 1994, holding 13,800 seats, which is the exact capacity for this year in Hard Rock Stadium. Trouble with local politicians that prevented IMG, the Miami Open operators, to expand and improve the event, prompted the move to Hard Rock Stadium, with the assistance of billionaire Stephen Ross. The 2019 event will provide an opportunity for the event to create new traditions, as I wrote last year here: http://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/15414
In North America, while no other NFL stadiums have hosted tennis, the Rogers Centre (formerly the Skydome) in Toronto, home of baseball’s Blue Jays and, at one time, the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts, hosted an ATP event in 1990 for one year, won by Ivan Lendl. In 2014, the U.S. Davis Cup team played against Great Britain in Petco Park in San Diego, home of baseball’s San Diego Padres. The USA could not channel the magic of their national past time and lost 3-1
Some previews of the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium can be found in the New York Times by Cindy Shmerler here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/sports/tennis/miami-open-hard-rock-stadium.html?fbclid=IwAR0MX1RkoREbdG8-hmEnhQN69xyCxb781Ar9YavJ8uXQ2p8j5we2q89Tlzk, in the Miami Herald by Michelle Kaufman here: https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/tennis/article228054334.html?fbclid=IwAR2dJaU_sMtBA73U4zWcaausKDgY-NFo1rRgSmb3uvArDvaZr5v7_z9oTpM and in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel by David Furones here: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/tennis/fl-sp-miami-open-preview-20190317-story.html?fbclid=IwAR2TV6IV6ToQuNwv6HrNc2-G2gPGN7X2JGIa-1i7sQTmCYPaJDaesQD1NOo
