Almagro was playing at about 20%, not sure if because of injury, already got his appearance fee or just didn't care. Was serving 2nd serves on 1st and just generally not into it at all.
Do Challengers give out appearance fees? If so, wow, that's news to me. There's so little money in the Challengers that it's surprising that they have the budget for appearance fees.
And no, Almagro didn't fly to the Dominican Republic for an appearance fee at a Challenger :lol:. First tournament back from injury after retiring in R2 of Roland Garros.
And no, Almagro didn't fly to the Dominican Republic for an appearance fee at a Challenger :lol:. First tournament back from injury after retiring in R2 of Roland Garros.
Update of the Walking Bye list for R1 of the US Open
1. Kalamazoo Champion
2. Nicolas Almagro
3. Dimitry Tursunov
4. Bernard Tomic
5. NCAA Champion
6. Geoffrey Blancaneaux
7. Nicolas Kicker
8. Andreas Haider-Maurer
9. Janko Tipsarevic
10. Jeremy Chardy
Once the director of Szczecin challenger said when Rafa was very young (& ranked in the 300s) he contacted the Szczecin team and said he'd come play and then demanded some huge amount of appearance fee that made everybody's jaws dropped off.
I've never heard officially the number, but unofficially it was more than the whole prize money of the tournament
They actually gave it a brief thought, but in the end they couldn't afford :lol: They could afford Ferrero, Nalbandian, Wawrinka, Coria, Lapentti around those times though... I know that these days our challengers don't have any good foreign stars for years, because contracting Polish players (JJ *cough cough*) became the main cost that eats up whole budget.
It pays off though, people even sit on stairs when a Polish guy is playing, press writes about their event, it's mentioned on TV... so it's their main goal.
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