German Masters Series
The German Masters Series (officially: German Masters Series presented by WILSON ) is a series of tennis tournaments for young players in Germany. The tournament series includes German tournaments in the categories ATP Challenger , ITF Futures in the women's and men's areas as well as national prize money tournaments . Throughout Germany, the German Masters Series is the tournament series for young talents on the move to the top of the world.
history
In 1975 there were only 17 general tournaments in the German tournament calendar. Wilhelm Burgemeister and Alex Kurucz - spokesman for the German ranking players at the time - presented the German Tennis Federation with a concept for a revitalization of the German tournament scene, with the idea of holding a series of uniform tournaments on a prize money basis with a master's degree tournament of the best in points. After there was no reaction from the German Tennis Federation, the new players' spokesmen Peter Dinckel and Rolf-Dieter Madlindl called the interested tournament organizers to a table and presented a concept for a "national tennis tournament series" for discussion. After additions and changes, the trial run started the following year with 15 tournaments, initially limited to the men. It ended with a Masters tournament with the best points in Hamburg, hosted by THC Klipper. The organizers joined forces under the name ADT - Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Tournamentveranstalter, together with Rolf-Dieter Madlindl as spokesman and coordinator. The prize money was now over 500,000 DM. Due to the great success and to relieve the coordinator of the series, the organizers now formed a constitution commission and a provisional advisory board, which Madlindl should stand by. This included Wolfgang Diewitz, Claus-Jürgen Meyer and Maximilian Büchs.
At the general assembly of the German Tennis Association in Bremen in 1979, the working group was formally and officially integrated into the German Tennis Association. DTB speaker Karl-Heinz Herfs took over the chairmanship. Since it was now possible to hold tournaments with world ranking points, after the success of the series it made sense to offer German players international opportunities in their own country for the first time in 1980. It started with a "European Ladies Circuit" for the first time. Circuits for men and women followed in 1981, the so-called "US $ 25,000 tournaments", on which world ranking points were awarded. Two years later, ADT was converted into a GmbH for further integration into the DTB. In 1991 the ADT headquarters were relocated from Munich to the DTB headquarters in Hamburg.
In 2019 the German Masters Series consisted of 56 tournaments with a total prize money of over one million euros. This includes nine tournaments on the ATP Challenger Tour and 15 tournaments at ITF level .