Trophy for the ATP Ch. Tournament Uruguay Open 2012.

Tennis tournaments around the world wants to make a particular trophy basically to distinguish from the rest -in excellence- and to give something memorable to the player for his hard effort to win the competition. Some competitions  keeps the same in every edition, some of them makes different ones each time.
This trophy will be given by an authority of a main sponsor or from the government of the country to the championship of the event, during a ceremony that is -in most of the cases like this- televised alive and covered by many photographers including audience.
On the other hand, professional tennis players are used to travel around the world from a week to another following a calendar of tournaments. So, it is quite common that they do not keep trophies because of size, weight, materials, pricking parts, etc.
For all this, some tournament gives an impressive trophy or sculpture during the ceremony, but after that the player gets a replica or another small trophy. Other option in small tournaments like challengers or futures organisers just buy a regular cup and or silver dishes, in order to resolve the issue and not expend money.

The challenge for the Uruguay Open trophy was to make one that:

• has a strong relation with the new visual brand (slice of a ball and stripes of uruguayan flag) and brand attributes of the tournament (dynamic, fresh, open)
• is unique (never seen before), exclusive and with high quality in details
• is as cheap as possible.
• the player want keep it and to show it in his residence.
• not too big (for keep it and carry) but not too small (for TV transmition)
• is as light as possible, but resistant to small impacts (also water resistant – is an outdoors event)
• – is easy to carry.

As I am living Norway, and I was traveling to Uruguay for this event, I use my own travel as a test.
The solution was based in assembling already made objects.

Assemblage: (with Synøve Flobak)

Starting from the base the materials I used were:
– A stainless steel dish with a thin black rubber base (this dish was originally made to put candles on it),
– A small bamboo bowl upside-down, laser engraved.
– A half big bamboo bowl with cutoff edges.
– 1 long screw.

– small holes in the middle of the dish and the small bowl base.
– half hole and nut glued -with epoxy- in the half bowl.
– screw joining dish, small bowl and the half bowl.

The winner of the trophy was the argentinian player Horacio Zeballos (ATP’s Newcomer Of The Year award for 2009 and current #39 ATP, Apr.2013)

“(the trophy) Is quite different from the rest, I’ll take it to my home in Mar del Plata. This one is original, I really like it !”