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Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters

The Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters is an invitational tournament for eight internationally renowned players, two of whom have topped the WTA (Women's Tennis Association) rankings at least once in their career.

The IWTP has been organising WTA events since 1996. The list of winners includes such star names as Anke Huber, Amanda Coetzer, Mary Pierce, Jennifer Capriati, Ana Ivanovic, Elena Dementieva, Roberta Vinci, Victoria Azarenka, Venus Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Julia Görges and Jelena Ostapenko.

Kim Clijsters took the title five times: in 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005.

After the final of Luxembourg’s 25th WTA event in 2021, the IWTP decided to pursue its goals in a new way. This led to the birth of the Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters, the first event of which was held at d’Coque sports centre from 20 to 23 October 2022.

Making tennis more sustainable

Tennis is the world’s fourth-most polluting sport, with over 300 million balls used each year. Although Luxembourg isn’t at the top of the list, it nevertheless consumes 200,000 balls – 11 tonnes – annually.

The ubiquitous yellow ball is 82% made from rubber. Although rubber can be recycled, Luxembourg doesn’t currently have a recovery facility.

Therefore, the Luxembourg Tennis Federation together with BGL BNP Paribas has launched the “Responsible Tennis” project. The plan involves recovering used tennis balls and transforming them into sports flooring via a five-stage process: the balls are first collected from tennis clubs in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg before being crushed at a special facility at Passel in France; the new material is then transported to Bad Berleburg in Germany, where it is transformed into watertight flooring; finally, the new flooring is installed in sports halls and playgrounds, etc