The Rio Open, also known as the ''Rio Open presented by Claro'' for sponsorship reasons, is a tennis event on the

ATP Tour The ATP Tour (known as ATP World Tour between January 2009 and December 2018) is the sole worldwide top-tier tennis tour for men organized by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) founded in 1990 that replaced the earlier dual Grand Prix ...

and former

WTA International Tournaments The WTA International tournaments was a category for tennis tournaments of the Women's Tennis Association from the 2009 WTA Tour until 2020, which replaced the previous Tier III and Tier IV categories. As of 2021 these events have been reclassifie ...

event. The tournament is played on outdoor

clay court A clay court is one of the types of tennis court on which the sport of tennis is played. Clay courts are built on a foundation of crushed stone, brick, shale, and other construction aggregate, aggregate, with a thin layer of fine clay particles ...

s at the Jockey Club Brasileiro in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

. It is the only

ATP Tour 500 The ATP 500 tournaments (previously known as the ''ATP World Tour 500'' tournaments, ''ATP International Series Gold'', and ''ATP Championship Series'') are the fourth highest tier of annual men's tennis tournament after the four Grand Slam (tenni ...

event in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

and the only

event in Brazil (since 2020).

History

There have been a number of precursor tournaments to this one held in Rio de Janeiro. The Rio de Janeiro International was a combined men's and women's event played on outdoor clay courts as part of the ILTF South American Circuit from 1947 to 1967 at the Rio de Janeiro Country Club. Later, the

Rio de Janeiro Open The Rio de Janeiro Open (known as the Banespa Rio de Janeiro Open for sponsorship reasons) was a men's tennis tournament from 1989 to 1990 on indoor carpet courts.carpet courts A carpet court is a type of tennis court. The International Tennis Federation describes the surface as a "textile or polymeric material supplied in rolls or sheets of finished product". It is one of the fastest court types, second only to grass co ...

from 1989 to 1990 and was the first ATP World Series event played in Brazil. The licence for the men's event was taken over from the U.S. National Indoor Championships which did continue but was downgraded from an ATP 500 to an

ATP 250 The ATP 250 tournaments (previously known as the ''ATP World Tour 250'' tournaments, ''ATP International Series'', and ''ATP World Series'') are the lowest tier of annual men's tennis tournaments on the main ATP Tour, after the four Grand Slam (t ...

tournament. The first edition in 2014 was headlined by former world number one,

Rafael Nadal Rafael Nadal Parera (born 3 June 1986) is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the List of ATP number 1 ranked singles tennis players, world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for ...

and fellow Spanish player

David Ferrer David Ferrer Ern (; ; born 2 April 1982) is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 3 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in July 2013. Ferrer won 27 ATP Tour singles titles, including a ...

. Both of them are well known clay court specialists. The women's tournament was discontinued and replaced by Hungarian Ladies Open after the 2016 edition. Prior to the 2019 edition, there was talk of moving the tournament from the clay court surface of Jockey Club Brasileiro to the outdoor hard courts at the Olympic Tennis Centre, which hosted the tennis events of the

2016 Summer Olympics The 2016 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad () and officially branded as Rio 2016, were an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with preliminary events i ...

situated in Barra Olympic Park. The reasoning was to attract more world-class players to the tournament such as

Novak Djokovic Novak Djokovic ( sr-Cyrl-Latn, Новак Ђоковић, Novak Đoković, separator=" / ", ; born 22 May 1987) is a Serbian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as the List of ATP number 1 ranked singles tennis players#Weeks at N ...

Roger Federer Roger Federer ( , ; born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the List of ATP number 1 ranked singles tennis players, world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 3 ...

, and

Andy Murray Sir Andrew Barron Murray (born 15 May 1987) is a British former professional tennis player and coach. He was ranked as the List of ATP number 1 ranked singles tennis players, world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professio ...

who consistently declined to play the event. Juan Martin del Potro once mentioned to the Rio Open director Luiz Carvalho that he would enter the Rio Open when the surface changes. This change never occurred.

Past finals

Men's singles

Men's doubles

Women's singles

Women's doubles

References

External links

*
Rio Open | Overview | ATP Tour | Tennis
{{WTA International tournaments Recurring sporting events established in 2014 2014 establishments in Brazil Sports competitions in Rio de Janeiro (city)