The former Wimbledon semifinalist meets the five-time Grand Slam champion at the net, at the end of a hard-fought final. The capacity crowd cheers for both players as Kirsten Flipkens powers to the title, on the back of some excellent clutch volleys late in a 6-4, 2-6, 10-7 match tiebreak win over the legendary Martina Hingis. Flipkens joins four-time major winner Kim Clijsters and former world No. 2 Anett Kontaveit in lifting the trophy, once sought by Grand Slam champions such as Martina Navratilova, Mary Pierce, and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario.

Welcome to the Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters, where some of the best women’s players in the world play an exhibition event that is more serious than most in one of the smallest countries on Earth. At this year’s tournament, which concluded last Sunday, Hingis (now age 44) and Flipkens (38) competed alongside 2008 French Open champion and former world No. 1 Ana Ivanovic (46); 2015 U.S. Open champion Flavia Pennetta (42); former world No. 4 Dominika Cibulkova (35); one-time world No. 9 Andrea Petkovic (37); ex-world No. 27 Laura Robson (30) and Magdalena Rybarikova (36), once the world No. 17.

Running concurrent to the Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters, the Six Kings Slam in Saudi Arabia was creating rather more headlines, with its $6million (£4.6m) prize money for eventual winner Jannik Sinner and a star-studded lineup generating an event that didn’t play like an exhibition. Nearly 3,000 miles away from Riyadh, the same thing was happening in a duchy, with the tournament being broadcast on Sky Sports in Germany.

This is not the invitationals of Grand Slam tournaments like the French Open and Wimbledon, where the players move at a pretty sedate pace and trick-shot kings such as Mansour Bahrami are the headline acts, extending points with whimsy and good-hearted sadism instead of trying to win them directly. In Luxembourg, former world No. 5 Daniela Hantuchova is appointed by tournament organizers to go on scouting missions to events including those Grand Slam invitationals, to see who could actually still play some proper tennis.

“I know how players were on the court, so it’s about who can add the most value on and off the court and help create the best atmosphere,” she says. All of the players on show this year were invited to participate, and it was Ivanovic’s first event since retiring from the sport eight years ago — and she was watched by her husband Bastian Schweinsteiger, the former Germany and Bayern Munich midfielder. They still had to meet certain criteria: the event recruits at least four former top-10 players, with the other four having been ranked no lower than No. 50.

Robson, the British former junior Wimbledon champion whose career was cut short by injuries, played her first singles match in six years in a 6-3, 6-2 defeat against Hingis.

“They want people to try, to play a proper match,” Robson said in a phone interview straight after being “chopped” by her opponent. “Everyone’s been on the practice courts getting ready for their matches. I maybe haven’t been able to do as much as I would have liked, but I’ve been trying to cram in as much practice as possible.

“Everyone’s trying to play well rather than being a fun-and-giggle exhibition.”

“This is a real tournament,” said Hingis, who was speaking to The Athletic last week on a day off while sightseeing with her five-year-old daughter Lia. Luxembourg’s medieval castles proved to be a big hit. “You have to go in and be prepared. This is the only time I play singles.”

Hingis can’t remember playing any competitive singles apart from this event since retiring from the discipline in 2007.

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Luxembourg does not have a massive tennis heritage, unsurprising for a country whose population of around 675,000 puts it just below the Solomon Islands in the world ranking. Its most famous players are Mandy Minella — who reached a career high of No. 66 and has played this event before — and Gilles Muller, a former Wimbledon and U.S. Open quarterfinalist.

The Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters originated as an exhibition event in 1991, and went back to being an exhibition three years ago. But from 1996 to 2021, it was an official WTA 250-level tournament, with an end-of-season slot that invited big-name players to take wildcards with the chance to accrue points before the WTA Tour Finals. Clijsters won it five times, including the first WTA title of her career as a 16-year-old in 1999, while other former winners include Ivanovic, Venus Williams and Jennifer Capriati.

The tournament then was known for its quirkiness and intimate venue, with only a few courts and a roof so low the ball would often hit it during play.

Today, the Masters version is played at an even smaller venue, the Coque, with a capacity of around 1,500. It was full for most of the tournament, which was played from Thursday, October 17, until the final the following Sunday.

Eventual winner Kirsten Flipkens.

Like the concurrent Six Kings Slam, the event is designed to create interest in tourism and investment for its host nation — without the varnishing of a heavily criticized human rights record. The state of Luxembourg is its main backer, providing prize money of €5,000 (£4,165) for the beaten quarterfinalists, €10,000 (£8,330) for the semifinalists, €20,000 (£16,661) for the runner-up and €50,000 (£41,653) for the champion, as well as the money required to hold the event.

The tournament organizer, International Women’s Tennis Promotion (IWTP), says it also has “the aim of promoting international women’s tennis in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg” but the group doesn’t do anything outside of this event. It’s also difficult to quantify how much hosting the original event and this new Masters version has inspired generations of players in Luxembourg. The country’s tennis federation did not respond when asked for participation figures.

“There is a lot of interest in tennis from young people in Luxembourg,” tournament director Danielle Maas said in an interview last week. “We do tennis clinics during the event, and there are lots of students attending who get to meet and speak to the players.”

The other big sponsor of the tournament is the sports and entertainment agency Octagon, which represents three of the players involved — Hingis, Ivanovic and Cibulkova — as well as ambassador and recruiter Hantuchova. It benefits from promoting its own players, who also receive appearance fees that touch six figures (in euros) for the biggest names. Players are also chosen if they might help to drive the commercial value of the event, for instance bringing it to valuable television or sponsorship markets, with Octagon looking after the recruitment side of things.

When Maas, a tennis fanatic who has been running the event from the start, evolved the 250 tournament into its current iteration, Octagon helped to propose Hantuchova as its ambassador. “Danielle saw an opportunity to offer something no one had offered, which was a legends event exclusively for the women,” said Alastair Garland, senior vice-president of Octagon Tennis in a phone interview this week.

Hantuchova added: “It’s a great opportunity for young girls to come and watch, and we talk about how tennis has helped in our life. We have a talk as well where we invite famous people from Luxembourg, where we discuss how to transition from one career to another.”

Robson adds to this sentiment, touching on the other part of this event that makes it more than another exhibition: “This is all we have for veterans’ singles, it’s unique.”

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Until 2021, the ATP Champions Tour provided a popular outlet for men’s tennis veterans for over 25 years. Like the Luxembourg tournament, it used entry criteria to ensure a certain quality of tennis: Only former world No. 1s, Grand Slam finalists and members of winning Davis Cup teams could participate, either from the age of 35 or after being retired for two years. The last edition of its season-ending final at central London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2021 was followed by a single season of organized competition in 2022, which then gave way to a smaller legends event at Delray Beach, Florida.

The WTA Tour hosted legends’ doubles events during the WTA Tour Finals between 2014 and 2018, but has no plans for further competitions. It has promoted the Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters but is not officially affiliated with the tournament.

Fans packed the 1,500-capacity arena to watch some of the best women’s tennis players in recent history.

This is an important part of the picture, because unlike the men, retired women’s tennis players have never had any sort of veterans’ tour. “We always looked enviously at the ATP guys having a senior tour,” Hantuchova said. “We would have loved to be able to compete like this, but that’s why this event is so precious.”

The paucity of veterans’ events is noteworthy, as retiring tennis stars increasingly look to off-court media and ambassadorial opportunities ahead of playing more tennis in a new context. The crowds in Luxembourg and the Sky Sports deal in Germany suggest an appetite for seeing the likes of Hingis and Ivanovic again, and Octagon’s Garland is certainly convinced by these metrics.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity,” he said. “There are Grand Slam winners and incredible athletes, some of whom are mothers now and are great representatives for the sport, who are underutilised.”

Other tennis figures seem to agree.

ATP Tour sources, who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships, told The Athletic that the previously popular Champions Tour is currently being reviewed with the idea of revamping it, and Laver Cup chairman Tony Godsick has argued that unless legends of the sport become a coach or a pundit, it’s easy for them to become invisible. At the Laver Cup, it’s by being a team captain or in attendance that fans get reacquainted with some of these players; in Luxembourg, it’s by seeing them pick up a racket again.

The tennis in Luxembourg also offers a way for new fans to see the evolution of the sport up close. It’s a touch slower and can feel a bit dated, but seeing Flipkens frequently attack the net, or the variety and feel of Hingis, is a way into understanding how much tennis can change in a relatively short space of time. And despite all this seriousness at the heart of the event, the fact it’s still an exhibition does offer something of its own.

As well as getting to compete again, one of the things the players most value from the event is the chance to catch up and hang out.

“I’ve just been on the centre court practising and it’s like a living room, everyone’s just chatting,” Hantuchova said.

“Normally everyone wants to just go back and speak to their teams, but we’re just all talking about life and playing some tennis in between. It’s really cool. It’s like catching up with old friends, but instead of meeting over a coffee, we do it with a racket in our hands.”

(Photos: Roland Miny / Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters)