The If Stockholm Open is a tennis event on the ATP Tour held in Stockholm, Sweden in the end of October or beginning of November each year. The organizer of the tournament is The Royal Lawn Tennis Club of Stockholm.
The first Stockholm Open was held in 1969 and it has been played each year ever since. The tournament is played on indoor hard court and features both men's singles and doubles tournament. In 1975, 1979, and 1980, a short-lived women's competition was held, which was played on carpet.
Stockholm Open was first held in 1969 in Kungliga tennishallen in Stockholm. It has been held there ever since except for the years 1989 to 1994 when it was held in the Stockholm Globe Arena. Between 1970 and 1989 it was a major ranking tournament of the Grand Prix Tennis Tour as part of the Grand Prix Championship Series (except from 1981 to 1983, when it was briefly downgraded).
From 1990 until 1994 it was an ATP Championship Series Single Week event. Since 1995, the tournament has been downgraded from Super 9 status offering $1.72 million in prize money to ATP World Tour 250 series level with €600,000 prize money.
Stockholm (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈstɔkːˈhɔlm, ˈstɔkːˈɔlm, ˈstɔkːɔlm]( listen to the second one)) is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 864,324 in the municipality (2010), 1.4 million in the urban area (2010), and around 2.1 million in the 6,519 km2 (2,517.00 sq mi) metropolitan area (2010). As of 2010, the Stockholm metropolitan area is home to approximately 22% of Sweden's population.
Founded no later than c. 1250, possibly as early as 1187, Stockholm has long been one of Sweden's cultural, media, political, and economic centres. Its strategic location on 14 islands on the south-central east coast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago, has been historically important. Stockholm has been nominated by GaWC as a global city, with a ranking of Alpha-. In The 2008 Global Cities Index, Stockholm ranked 24th in the world, 10th in Europe, and first in Scandinavia. Stockholm is known for its beauty, its buildings and architecture, its abundant clean and open water, and its many parks. It is sometimes referred to as Venice of the North.
Gunnar Eric Nelson (born September 20, 1967) is an American musician, singer, and songwriter and international multi-platinum recording artist.
Nelson is the son of teen idol Ricky Nelson and actress Kristin Harmon. He is the identical twin brother of Matthew Nelson, and brother of Tracy Nelson and musician Sam Nelson. His paternal grandparents are Ozzie Nelson and Harriet Hilliard from the television program, Ozzie and Harriet. His maternal grandparents are football player and sports broadcaster Tom Harmon and the 1940s b-movie actress Elyse Knox. His maternal uncle is actor Mark Harmon.
The Nelson brothers spent two years learning how to write songs and, in the process, met their mentor, Los Angeles record producer Marc Tanner. Tanner and the twins wrote what would become the triple-platinum After the Rain album in 1990, after being signed to Geffen Records in 1989.
Their singles, "(I Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection", "After the Rain", "More Than Ever", "Only Time Will Tell" and "(You Got Me) All Shook Up," all held positions on Billboard's Top 40 with "Love and Affection" reaching #1 in September 1990, after receiving airplay on MTV where they also had #1 videos.
Roger Federer (German pronunciation: [ˈfeːdəʁɐ]) (born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss professional tennis player who held the ATP No. 1 position for a record 237 consecutive weeks from 2 February 2004 to 18 August 2008. Federer has occupied the #1 ranking for 285 overall weeks, one week short of the record 286 weeks held by Pete Sampras. As of 28 May 2012, he is ranked World No. 3. Federer has won a men's record 16 Grand Slam singles titles. He is one of seven male players to capture the career Grand Slam and one of three (with Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal) to do so on three different surfaces (clay, grass, and hard courts). He is the only male player in tennis history to have reached the title match of each Grand Slam tournament at least five times and also the final at each of the nine ATP Masters 1000 Tournaments. Many sports analysts, tennis critics, and former and current players consider Federer to be the greatest tennis player of all time.
Federer has appeared in an unprecedented 23 career Grand Slam tournament finals, including a men's record ten in a row, and appeared in 18 of 19 finals from the 2005 Wimbledon Championships through the 2010 Australian Open, the lone exception being the 2008 Australian Open. He holds the record of reaching the semifinals or better of 23 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments over five and a half years, from the 2004 Wimbledon Championships through the 2010 Australian Open. At the 2012 Australian Open, he reached a record 31st consecutive Grand Slam quarterfinal. During the course of his run at the 2012 French Open in Roland Garros, Federer eclipsed Jimmy Connors long standing record of 233 match wins in Grand Slam tournaments when he defeated Adrian Ungur in a second round match.