28 of july 2008

The hero of St. Petersburg Open 2007 is coming back!

The list of players who will participate in this year’s tournament has several additions – two players from the top ten confirmed their participation. The winner of St. Petersburg Open 2007 Andy Murray, who is also ranked number one in the UK, will be visiting our city this fall.

Last year tennis experts were talking about Andy as a young energetic players with a great future ahead of him, during the past season Murray stood up to these expectations. In 2007 he won two ATP tournaments, including St. Petersburg Open, and in 2008 became the winner in Doha and Marseille. However, to win St. Petersburg Open this time will be much harder – apart from seeded Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Safin, one of his opponents will be a more experienced Russian players Nikolay Davydenko.

Nikolay has been ranked in the top five for the long period of time and it seems as though he is not going to give up his spot. He has won ATP series tournaments 12 times so far and twice he was the winner of Masters Tournaments. Despite such a great number of awards, Nikolay couldn’t even make it to the quarterfinals of the tournament – in the second round he lost to Martin Chiluchi, the young player from Croatia. This year Nikolay will probably try to take revenge for the last year’s defeat, especially since he will have to compete against such great players.

We would like to remind that 6 players already confirmed their participation. Among them are Lleyton Hewitt (Australia), Andy Murray (UK), Marat Safin (Russia), Nikolay Davydenko (Russia), Mario Ancic (Croatia), Mikhail Youzhny (Russia), Complete list of players will be announced at the first press conference of the St. Petersburg Open 2008, which will take place on September 10, 2008.