Sports fans in Stuttgart are very happy this week between the Mercedes Cup tennis tournament and the World Cup kickoff, there’s a lot to watch and a lot of excitement! Last weekend we decided to check out the Mercedes Cup and made a ‘day-date’ out of it!
The Mercedes Cup is an ATP World Tour tennis tournament on grass courts. The tournament is sponsored by Mercedes and the winner of the tournament gets prize money and a new car! We hadn’t been before and wanted to check it out since it’s local and the tournament brings some big names to Stuttgart like Rodger Federer.
The tournament started last weekend with playoffs and continues with matches each day until the final on Sunday. This was our first tennis tournament so we didn’t know what to expect but had a great time. You buy center court tickets that get you access to the entire tennis ‘village’ as well as your seats at center court. The entire area has five other grass courts, food stalls, a biergarten, cocktail and wine bars, and vendor shops. When you’re not watching a tennis match you can browse and shop for tennis gear, grab a glass of Kessler sekt, or relax in the biergarten right near the player’s lounge. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the Mercedes Cup.
We bought tickets for last Sunday when playoff games were still going on. I thought the tickets were reasonably priced given you get to watch as many matches as you wish for that day. We saw German Tim Puetz play the Italian Matteo Viola on center court – Viola won despite the German cheers, and an American Denis Kudla play Croatian Victor Galovic on a side court – Kudla the American won!
Hanging out in the Mercedes Cup in between tennis matches
The highlight of the day was getting to watch Rodger Federer practice… yes, Rodger Federer! You know, the number two tennis player in the world and maybe after this tournament, back to number one! It was his first time on the Stuttgarter grass courts this year and his first tournament since playing in February.
Federer practiced on center court around 17:30 and played for 2 hours. Of course it would be amazing to see him in a match (you still can tomorrow!) but I really enjoyed watching him practice. He was more relaxed and even joked with the crowd (he’s from Switzerland and speaks German if you didn’t know). The crowd was able to be extra cheerful since it was practice and not an intense match. It was a very intimate, cool experience and you almost felt like you were cheering on your good friend. After his practice, he gave an interview and signed autographs in the crowd. I didn’t get to officially meet him (tear!) but I did get to snap a cool photo very close to him. It was a win for me!!
Going in to the day we didn’t know what to expect but we really had the best time, and it turned out to be a great day-date (we’ve had a bunch of great Stuttgart dates like here and here)! Bravo Stuttgart!!
Get There
The tournament is in Killesburg. Take the S-bahn to the Hauptbahnhof, then the U-5 to Killesburg. It’s about a 10-15 minute walk from the Killesburg stop, although they do have shuttles for the finals weekend
Tickets
Check out the tennis tournament if you’re in Stuttgart! Tickets are still for sale for the final match tomorrow, here!
Dress
I personally like to dress up a little bit for the tennis match, but there were also people in sports wear. Just make sure to wear comfy flat shoes, between the walk to/from the train station, gravel, and rocks/grass you’ll need them.
What I wore to the Mercedes Cup – purse, Hermes scarf, topshop dress, zara shoes.
xo