Austrian rising star Thiem top seed at new tennis tournament in Mexico

Austria’s Dominic Thiem will be the top seed at the new ATP 250 tournament in Los Cabos, a city at the tip of northwestern Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula, which will be held Aug. 813 and offer $800,000 in prize money, organizers said Wednesday.

Thiem, the world No. 8, leads a field of players ranked higher than 71 on the Association of Tennis Professionals, or ATP, list, Los Cabos tournament director Jose Antonio Fernandez said.

“We have a cut off of 71 on the ATP (rankings), there’s excellent quality and highlevel players, this shows how important the tournament is,” Fernandez said.

Among the players expected to take the court in Los Cabos are Australia’s Bernard Tomic, the world No. 19; Spain’s Feliciano Lopez, who is ranked 21st in the world; and France’s Benoit Paire, the world No. 23.

In addition to Lopez, the tournament, which is taking place at the same time as the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, will feature four other Spanish players: Marcel Granollers, the world No. 43; Nicolas Almagro, who is ranked 47th in the world; Fernando Verdasco, the world No. 53; and world No. 58 Guillermo Garcia.

The Los Cabos Open, a hardcourt event, replaces the ATP 250 event in Bogota, a tournament won by Tomic in 2015.

Los Cabos will have a main draw of 28 players, including the 19 announced on Wednesday and three wildcards.

The other players will enter the main draw via qualifying, with two other slots to be announced in the next few days, the tournament director said.

Stadium court will have a capacity of 3,500 and will be ready by July 8, a month before the tournament’s start, Fernandez said.

Organizers built the stadium and four other hard courts at the Delmar International School in Cabo San Lucas, Fernandez said.