Copyright © 2015. No duplication is permitted without permission from Bob Larson Tennis.

Italian sports administrators and their politician rivals are posturing over the fate of the Italian Open, with the president of the tennis federation threatening to move the historic event from Rome’s cramped  Foro Italico to a faceless arena in Milan.

While the ruse may be pure Italian political theatre, the threat of a change could be real for the mid-term future of the clay tournament which has been held at the capital’s riverside venue on the Tiber for eight decades since 1935.

Federation boss Angelo Binaghi has thrown down the challenge to the city government to come up with millions of euros in funding to help the event, even as Rome’s mayor resigned last week in an expense account scandal which has left the Eternal City in the hands of caretakers.

Binaghi had suggested last spring that the men’s and women’s tournament considered the last prime tune-up before Roland Garros be moved to a yet-to-be-built venue 30 kilometers from the city near the Leonardo da Vinci airport.

That proposal is considered more of a strategic gambit than an actual plan in the theatrical world of Italian sports politics.

Now, the stakes in the chess game have been raised with the vague Milan option.

Federation officials say that a 375 per cent increase in crowds has pushed the historic, space-restricted Foro – designed in the heyday of Mussolini and featuring heroic oversized marble statues of nude warriors around the grounds of the iconic secondary showcourt – to its capacity.

A main court completed only five years ago with 10,500 capacity is also now considered too small.

“On one side we would be crazy to leave this location but on the other hand we have to realize that the center of Italian tennis is Milan,” was Binaghi’s opening gambit. “The tournament is here (Rome) merely due to its history and tradition.

“We’re bursting at the seams here, the tournament has grown over the last decade. We don’t have any more room. In Milan it would be much easier to expand rapidly.”

While the immediate future of Rome is not threatened, the operatic power play is also intertwined with the city’s bid for the 2024 Olympics, where it is competing against Paris, Los Angeles, Hamburg and Budapest.

Rome’s normal transport and organizational chaos seems to increase during the tennis week, with traffic also at a standstill during peak hours on the roads around the Foro area. The event – organization shortcoming aside – is well-received by players, who would seem loathe to have it moved elsewhere.

Copyright © 2015. No duplication is permitted without permission from Bob Larson Tennis.