The Madrid Masters 2024 is coming up and the trophy unveiling has left a lot of fans upset. IMG (International Management Group), the American multinational sports, fashion, and media company, has been their main target of criticism largely because since they took over the ownership of the event, the trophy has not exactly garnered respect. Today, perhaps no other trophy looks as different as the Madrid Masters one in the tennis calendar.
An X user ‘Olly’ shared two pictures of the Madrid Masters trophy, the second one with a man standing by it. The trophy is entirely black and has the quadrangular shape of a curvilinear reverse trapezoid. It somewhat looks like the head of an axe, that is kept on the table.
With black outlines, there is a mesh-like pattern in the center of the trophy. Fans didn’t take very kindly to the design of the trophy either. Here are some of their reactions:
“How do they manage to make it worse every year.”
“it gets uglier every year.”
“This is so embarrassing omg”
“Does it include the creepy guy as a bonus?”
The 2023 Madrid Masters trophy, which Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka won, wasn’t much better either. It looked like flower petals entangled oddly. The 2022 trophy was worse, which looked like two extremely long semi-circles were conjoined, with a gap in between.
In 2021, Alexander Zverev won the famous Ion Tiriac Trophy, which looked like a ‘stairway to heaven’ (which was also an inspiration), and the stairs in the trophy were all tennis racquets. This trophy was still the better of all of them.
The ‘Stairway to Heaven’ trophy that Zverev won, was something that Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Petra Kvitova also won in the past. Fans saw the 2024 trophy and also started comparing it to the old trophies that Nadal and Djokovic won. In 2010, Nadal won the ‘circular disc’ trophy. Whereas in 2011, 2016, and 2019, Djokovic won the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ trophy. Fans love those designs much more than today’s one.
IMG only became the owner of this tournament from 2021 onwards. This was when former Romanian tennis legend Ion Tiriac, also the richest ever tennis player, sold it to them for an approximate sum of 360 million euros ($384 million).
All you need to know about the ATP Madrid Masters 2024
The Madrid Masters 2024 will start on April 22 and culminate on May 5, although the main draw will begin from April 24. The Caja Magica in Madrid will host the clay-court ATP 1000 Masters event this year. Official draws for the tournament will be released on April 22.
Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz will not be participating in the tournament for various reasons, which would dent the tournament’s appeal to a huge extent. But Rafael Nadal is set to be the biggest name confirmed for the same, while Jannik Sinner is expected to be the top seed for the first time in a Masters 1000 tournament in his career. Other top 10 players like Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Holger Rune, Grigor Dimitrov and Casper Ruud will be participating too.
The matches from this tournament will stream live on the Tennis Channel in the US and Sky Sports in the UK. The prize money for the winner is just above a million US dollars ($1,027,810 approximately). The runner-up will get $546,607.
