(Tennis news) The first Masters 500 event of the season has announced former champions Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga accepting the wildcards at Rotterdam. ABN Amro World Tennis Tournament will start from February 7th as players get ready for either dropping or gaining valuable points. There are two more Masters 500 events this month as many players will play 2 of them because of the lack of time gap between the events.

Tsonga was last seen playing 24 hours ago when he was defeated early at Montpellier. The Frenchman had won the title at Rotterdam 5 years ago while not dropping a set until the final against David Goffin. The 36 year old was the runner up to Robin Soderling in 2011 and is making a comeback at the event after a 2 year gap. Tsonga last reached a final three years ago when he won the title at Metz and ended the year ranked 35; currently he is ranked 259 and a return to the 100 feels like a distant dream.

Andy Murray had made his debut at the event 14 years back and the title win in 2009 was his 10th career title win. Murray had lost to eventual champion Andrey Rublev last year in the 4th round after a five year absence. The former world number one made his first final in over three years this year at Sydney and has already played two 3+ plus hour matches in which the second one was 8 minutes short of the 4 hour mark. His fitness has improved from last year so he is expected to play a lot more matches.

Daniil Medvedev will not be seen on court for a few days as he announced that he would not be playing at Rotterdam. The Russian had been brutally honest after the 2022 Australian Open final, it is not clear when he will be back but might act differently with the crowd this time. The world number 2 had reached the quarterfinals in his debut here in 2018 then made the semifinals next year but over the past two years he has lost in the opening match.

“Unfortunately I will not play in Rotterdam this year,” Medvedev said. “I just got back from Australia and am not ready to compete. Rotterdam is one of the favourite stops on the Tour and Richard does a great job for the players there. I look forward to coming back in the future.”

Also read: Bopanna-Ramkumar duo enters doubles semis, Yuki crashes out from Tata Open