Kim Clijsters & Elena Dementieva Play Fountain Tennis
13 August 2009
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To celebrate the start of the Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open, Sony Ericsson and the stars of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, took the sport to a place it has never been before the middle of a fountain at one of America’s most famous amusement parks.
Fountain Tennis follows on the heels of spectacular and innovative on stunts that have seen some of the most recognizable female athletes on the planet play tennis in unusual places - on water, on car rooftops in Miami, in a metro station in Madrid, and on a desert island in the Arabian Sea in Doha.
Kim Clijsters, former US Open Champion and World No. 1, playing her inaugural event on her comeback to the WTA Tour, and World No. 4 Elena Dementieva, awed tennis fans by playing Fountain Tennis.
Rising high above the ground, a special tennis court was placed on a platform in the middle of the fountain set against the Eiffel Tower at the Kings Island entrance. Elena and Kim rallied against each other while literally chasing tennis balls through the fountain, giving onlookers a show of a lifetime.
With Fountain Tennis, Sony Ericsson was once again able to take the sport from the confines of the tennis court to a new audience and unexplored environment.
Commenting on the experience, Kim Clijsters said: "I never thought that my comeback would start with a match in the middle of a fountain!
"I couldn’t be happier playing a tennis match with Elena in the fountains of Kings Island and sharing my excitement of being back on WTA Tour with the tennis fans of Ohio at the Western & Southern Financial Group event."
Added World No. 4 Elena Dementieva: "I have now been a part of a few Sony Ericsson stunts in different parts of the world and I enjoyed each one tremendously. Fountain Tennis was another fun and unique experience for me and I am glad that I had the opportunity to play tennis with Kim and share this moment with fans."
Stacy Doster, Head of PR, Sony Ericsson North America, said: "Sony Ericsson is known for style and innovation and through stunts such as Fountain Tennis we are able to help energize the tennis fan experience and attract a wider interest to the sport. We’re pleased to support this innovative stunt in Cincinnati, the backyard of our valued partner, Cincinnati Bell."
"Kings Island is so well-known in the Midwest, and the fountains there are an icon of the park. They’ve probably been the subject of millions of photos over the years, and it’ll be fun to see them presented in a different way by these international superstars of tennis, said Bruce Flory, Tournament Director of the Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open."
This is not the first time that women’s tennis have come to places you would not expect with women tennis players have had a chance to compete not only on the court, but on water in Miami, on an island in the middle of the Arabian Sea, in front of Rome's iconic St. Peter's Cathedral, and most recently, on car rooftops in Florida's South Beach and deep underground in Madrid, on the tracks of one of the Spanish capital's busiest Metro stations.
The Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open is one of the largest, oldest and most prestigious tournaments in the world of tennis. Since the women's tour restructured its calendar last year, the tournament now falls in the prestigious Premier category and has attracted the world’s best tennis players.
In fact, Cincinnatians have been welcoming the best players in tennis for more than 100 years. The tournament started in 1899 and is today the oldest in the nation still played in its original city.
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