Steve Bellamy Quotations

We have 16 players who are the No. 1 player in their country. The cutoff to get into (the tournament) was No. 68 (in the ATP rankings). No tournament outside of a Grand Slam has that kind of quality and depth.

We were just looking to find the best partner that was willing to wrap their arms around the tournament and make a great home for it.

I'm a promoter of this sport so if I've ever got somebody who wants to come watch and can't because they can't get a ticket, that's just breaking my heart.

My mission is always to grow the game of tennis. I didn't want to just put on another tennis tournament. I wanted to do something that was different. I wanted to do something that could bring people that wouldn't normally go to a tennis tournament and watch, and then sell them on tennis while they are there.

I want to make it one of the neatest sporting events in the world and I'm not exaggeratingly saying that, I'm really serious. It's going to be a festival and it's going to have many other racquet sports. Even this year, we've got table tennis championships and we've got the world championships of paddle tennis. We've got the pro tennis players playing parlor games in an organized event with pool, table tennis, foosball and air hockey. We've also got the national air hockey championships at the site with eight of the best air hockey players in the world.

I'm pushing it to boundaries that are way new, and much, much further than any of these other events do. And if other people decide to be more like us, then I think that's fantastic.

She called just wanting to tell me about the facility and if she could get any kind of publicity on the Tennis Channel. She was telling me how neat this new facility was. She sent me some pictures and we came out and looked at it. We were like 'holy cow,' I can't believe this is a municipal tennis facility.

Outside of a Grand Slam, I don't think there's a tournament in the world that has this many top players representing their countries. It's really remarkable that we have this many No. 1's. And with so many countries being represented, it's going to give the fans from Las Vegas who are from those countries a chance to come out and root for their countrymen.

Next year, our aspirations are huge. We're going to have the world's biggest tennis tournament next year that's going to have tens of thousands of people that will play all over the country and they will all feed into Las Vegas. We'll have this big, mammoth draw the week before where probably 128 people all play for a chance to get into the main draw of the tournament and we're going to film it (for The Tennis Channel) and we're going to make it like an 'American Idol' type of thing. It's going to be cool.

It is just complete, guaranteed, instant credibility. They are two of the most exciting player in the history of the sport. The real magic of our draw is that it is so deep.