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What's the story?
With the 2020 tennis season set to start in less than a month, the top players are starting to plan their schedule and decide what tournaments they wish to play and which they wish to avoid.
Recent reports tell us that NextGen stars Alexander Zverev and Nick Kyrgios have both signed up to play at the Stuttgart Open in the summer of 2020.
In case you didn't know...
The Stuttgart Open was originally a claycourt tournament that was held in July. In 2015, however, the organisers switched the tournament to grass and rescheduled it to be played in June as a warm-up to Wimbledon.
The heart of the matter
The change from clay to grass has been a great success for the event and for tennis itself. With the grass-court swing being so criminally short, it is good that there is a wider variety of tournaments for players to play in preparation for the highlight of the tennis season, Wimbledon.
Since the change to grass, the tournament has boasted some of tennis's biggest stars, such as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Milos Raonic, Zverev and Kyrgios. It appears that the tournament is still attracting some of the game's top players and, as aforementioned, Zverev and Kyrgios are both signed to play there in the coming season.
It is unclear whether Federer will play at Stuttgart, although the Swiss Maestro has played there every year since 2017. Nevertheless, due to Federer's meticulous planning, the Swiss may not decide whether to attend or not until closer to the time.
What's next?
Even if Federer does not attend, the tournament will still host several tennis stars and thus far Zverev and Kyrgios are the two biggest to have signed up. Both NextGen stars had fairly disappointing seasons in 2019 so they will be looking to perform much better in the coming season.
