The Madrid Open, currently sponsored by Mutua Madrileña and known as the Mutua Madrid Open, is a joint men's and women's professional tennis tournament, held in Madrid, during early May. The clay court event is classified as an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 on the Association of Tennis Professionals tour and a Premier Mandatory event on the Women's Tennis Association tour. In the past it has also been known as the Madrid Masters. The tournament is traditionally played on a red clay surface. The event was played on blue courts in the 2012 tournament edition, with the ATP deciding against blue thereafter. Ion Țiriac, a Romanian former ATP pro and now billionaire businessman, has been the owner of the tournament since 2009. According to a Romanian publication which interviewed Țiriac in 2019, the tournament brings to the city of Madrid annual benefits exceeding €107 million. Țiriac announced in April 2019 that he has extended his sponsorship contract of the Mutua Madrid Open for 10 additional years, until 2031. Because he agreed to continue in Madrid, Țiriac will receive more than 30 million euros from the city of Madrid in the coming years.
History
From its inauguration as a men's only event in 2002, the tournament was classified as one of the ATP Masters Series tournaments, where it replaced the now defunct Eurocard Open in Stuttgart. It was held from 2002 to 2008 in the Madrid Arena as the first of two Master's indoor hard court late season events that preceded the ATP Tour Finals. In 2009, tournament was transformed, expanding to include a premier women's contest and shifting to an earlier period of the tennis season to become the second Master's tournament of the spring European clay court swing and moving outdoors to Park Manzanares, where a new complex with a retractable-roof equipped main court was constructed, the Caja Magica.
Blue clay
Tiriac proposed and implemented in 2012 a new color of blue clay for all the courts' surfaces, motivating that it would supposedly be better visually, especially for viewers on television. Some speculated that the adaptation of blue color was a nod to the titular sponsor of the tournament, the Spanish insurance giant Mutua Madrileña. This controversial change was subsequently granted and began to be used in the 2012 edition of the tournament. In 2009 one of the outer tennis courts had already been made of the new surface for the players to test it. Manuel Santana, the Open's director, had assured that aside from the colour, the surface kept the same properties as the traditional red clay. Feliciano López was announced as the Madrid tournament director, commencing 2019. On 1 December 2011, Țiriac confirmed that the blue clay surface was officially approved for the 2012 edition of the tournament, in both the ATP and WTA circuits. However, after the event took place in 2012, threats of future boycotts from some players, especially Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, led the tournament to return to the traditional red clay for the 2013 season. Roger Federer was the only player to win the tournament on three different surfaces: hard courts, red clay, and blue clay.
