Luxembourg's WTA Tournament

For a quarter of a century, the women's tour stopped every autumn in Kockelscheuer, on the southern edge of Luxembourg City. The indoor tournament at the CK Sportcenter grew from an invitation event into a regular WTA stop, carried several sponsor names, and was known to many fans as the Fortis Championships Luxembourg in the years this website served it.

From exhibition to WTA event

The event began at the CK Sportcenter in Luxembourg-Kockelscheuer in 1991 as an invitation-only tournament and kept that format until 1995. The early roll of honour, kept in this site's archive, shows how strong the field already was: Jana Novotná and Martina Navratilova each won twice, and Sabine Appelmans won in 1995.

In 1996 it became an official WTA tournament. It was a Tier III event from 1996 to 2004, and in 1996 it was known as the Seat Open. In 2005 it was promoted to Tier II, the first event of that level in Luxembourg, and it returned to Tier III in 2008. From 2009 it was an International-level tournament, later a WTA 250, and in its later sponsored years it carried the name BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open.

The champions

The tournament's own history page lists its WTA winners year by year. Anke Huber won the first WTA edition in 1996, followed by Amanda Coetzer in 1997, Mary Pierce in 1998 and Jennifer Capriati in 2000. Alicia Molik won in 2004, and Alona Bondarenko took the title in 2006, beating Francesca Schiavone in the final.

No player is as closely tied to Kockelscheuer as Kim Clijsters. The Belgian won in 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2003, and again in 2005, when she beat Anna-Lena Groenefeld in the final of the first Tier II edition. The event's later list of winners, published by the organisers, adds names such as Ana Ivanovic, Elena Dementieva, Roberta Vinci, Victoria Azarenka, Venus Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Julia Görges and Jelena Ostapenko.

After the WTA years

The WTA tournament ran for 25 years, from 1996 to 2021, with a break in 2020 because of the pandemic. The WTA event was last held in 2021. From 2022 a new invitation event for former top players took its place in Kockelscheuer.

The old tournament pages, from programmes and draws to access maps and ticket prices, are kept in the archive of this site, in French, German and English, as they were published at the time.