Steve Bellamy Tournament Quotations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.