Rosmalen

The Autotron began as a car museum, which moved to Rosmalen, on the edge of ’s-Hertogenbosch, in 1987. Two years later it staged an eight-player grass invitational, won by Miloslav Mečíř, and when the event joined the ATP tour in 1990 it was the only professional grass tournament in continental Europe. Halle followed in 1993.

The tournament has carried many sponsors’ names and is now the Libéma Open, with men’s and women’s events played together. Since 2015 it has opened the grass season in the week after Roland-Garros, the first chance each year for players to move from clay to grass.

Rosmalen is the outlier among the great grass venues: not a club at all, but an events ground whose grass is prepared for one week of professional tennis. It is proof that the surface can be established where there was no tradition of it, and that players will come.