At precisely 6:15 p.m. last night, tennis pros Venus Williams and Andy Murray volleyed a tennis ball from atop two Mercedes GLXs parked across the street from South Beach's News Café. Stopping foot traffic along busy Ocean Drive for 15 minutes, the stunt served as the kickoff to the Sony Ericsson Open tennis tournament beginning tomorrow at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne.
"Sony is all about bringing tennis to new audiences and adding a bit of glamour and glitz to the game," said Simone Bresi-Ando, corporate public relations manager for Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Management Ltd. "We wanted to take tennis someplace where you wouldn't expect it to be, and Ocean Drive in Miami isn't where you'd expect to see two international tennis stars playing a match."
Though traffic wasn't stopped completely, cars came to crawl and nearly 200 people snapped pictures as the two Sony Ericsson-branded Mercedes-Benzes—the tournament's official car sponsor—pulled up in front of the oceanfront eatery. Williams and Murray climbed out the sunroofs of their respective cars and began volleying a tennis ball. During the impromptu game, the players hit balls into the crowds gathered on both sides of the street, even stopping to autograph a few before leaving.
Each of the last two years, Sony Ericsson staged similar stunts just days before the matches in hopes of attracting a wider, more global audience to the sport as well as the 12-day Miami tournament. In 2007 the team staged glow-in-the-dark night tennis, while last year Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams played a match on the Gansevoort South Hotel's rooftop pool in a Walk on Water contest.
"Stunts were new to the tennis world when we introduced it," said Bresi-Ando. "We've had amazing results, making it [tennis] relevant to our target while also taking it global."
