Back in August, I visited Canada for the first time. It was the last of my 2020 COVID cancelled trips so it was a long time in the making! The highlight was ticking off a childhood dream to visit Niagara Falls 🥰. Of course with any trip, I like to tie it in with some live tennis. While we stayed in Toronto, we were fortunate to have a day at the National Bank Open which hosted the ATP tournament in 2023. I really enjoy writing these posts and I hope they might be of use to anyone considering a trip to Toronto in the future.
Buying tickets
In 2023, packages started to come on sale in January with single tickets available around February/March. We bought our tickets in early March. It seems that 2024 might be a little different as tickets appear to be on sale at the time of writing. The 2024 tournament will be a Tuesday to Monday tournament due to the Olympics. We didn’t buy tickets immediately and there were plenty of seats available for the first few days. If you are buying later in the tournament towards finals weekend then this might not be the case.
The main stadium in Toronto has three tiers: 100 (lower bowl), 200 (boxes) and 300 (upper tier). Within the 100s, there are a variety of pricing options depending on how close you are to the court. We searched all the different options to find the best trade-off between price and proximity to the court.
When we purchased tickets, it re-directed us to the Ticketmaster Canada site but it looks like it is now done on the tournament website via Ticketmaster. We had no issues purchasing tickets online. We paid $170 CAD for a pair of tickets (roughly £105) for seats towards the back of the 100s.
We opted for a day session. I always think day is much better value than night because there is more going on around the grounds. The venue in Toronto is located well outside of the city so this is something to take into account. Personally, we didn’t fancy the long journey back into the city late at night.
Getting to and from the venue
The Sobeys Stadium is situated on the campus of York University. We were surprised how far out from downtown Toronto the venue was. To get to the tennis, we took the Toronto Transit Commission subway using Yellow Line 1 from Union (downtown) to Pioneer Village station. This was a total of 18 stops (!) and took about 40 minutes. A single fare is $3.30 CAD and it was straightforward to purchase a ticket. I remember a random kind person came up to us while we were at a ticket machine and asked if we needed help. Obviously we looked like tourists! It was eerily quiet when we travelled on the subway in the morning and we wondered if there was in fact a tennis tournament going on! We were practically the only people to get off at Pioneer Village, which was a lovely station.
When we came out of the station, it took us a while to find our bearings. We managed to figure out the general direction of the venue and then we spotted our first tennis fans (you can spot us folk a mile off) so we knew we were going in the right direction. There are a lot of busy roads in the area. We wandered down the verge of NW Gate road which didn’t feel right. Soon a footpath emerged and we could see the Sobeys Stadium come into sight.
The tournament offers a free subway ride back from Pioneer Village. All you need to do is show your tennis tickets on your phone at the ticket gate. You don’t need a ticket when exiting the metro so that’s why you only need to show it when entering the Pioneer Village station. Unsurprisingly, the subway was much busier heading back into the city in the late afternoon/early evening.
Toronto Subway Map (Source: https://www.ttc.ca/routes-and-schedules/1/0)
Entering the grounds & what to take
There is one entrance to the grounds on Shoreham Drive. The gates opened at 10am and we pretty much strolled into the grounds at about 10:15am. I imagine it gets much busier after this. Tickets are now all on phones and you can store them in your “Wallet” which is handy if you are going for multiple days. Personally I miss the paper tickets as they are always a nice memento.
You are allowed to take in a small rucksack to the venue. Cameras were fine and mine wasn’t checked. We took in some snacks which were also fine. The only restriction was about drinks so we took an empty drinks bottle and then filled it up in the grounds.
The courts
A map of the grounds and location of all the courts can be found here on the NBO website.
Sobeys Stadium
The Sobeys Stadium seats 12,500 people. It’s an impressive stadium and one of the bigger ones on tour. As we headed to the stadium for the first time, we were a bit confused about which block our seats were located in. We realised you can take any staircase into the stadium and then walk around the central concourse to find the correct block.
The view from our seats (block 116, row P) was decent although slightly obstructed by the bars that run down the centre of the staircase heading down to the court. The actual seats were comfortable although there was very little legroom. There are no designated seats in the shade so bring a sun hat and sun cream! On our particular day it was blowing a gale and I had dressed like a fool so spent the first half of the day shivering.
We watched the entirety of our first match between Andy Murray and Lorenzo Sonego. It was a good match with a decent atmosphere and the majority of the crowd pulling for Murray. The 88 minute first set must be one of the longest sets that i’ve ever watched live. It is a shame that there are now only two matches in a session (i’m sure the day session used to have three matches?) and they don’t start play until 12:30pm. There was no way I was going to sit through a match with Zverev so we only watched the one match on the Sobeys Stadium.
Grandstand
A Centre Court ticket allows you access to every court on the grounds which is great (please take note, Eastbourne!) The second biggest court is Grandstand at the far southern end of the grounds. I got the impression that the covered stand behind the baseline was ticketed. All the other stands were definitely unreserved. While we were on the Grandstand court, there was an issue with the roof on the covered stand as a gust of wind knocked something and it began to deflate. Thankfully no one was hurt and they managed to fix it. One of the lines of the day from umpire, Fergus Murphy to the crowd under the dodgy roof – “it may be in your best interest to move!”.
Other than that it was unreserved, I didn’t enjoy watching tennis on the Grandstand court. It was pretty uninspiring to be honest. We just couldn’t get a decent view as there was always some kind of obstruction. There are no back rests so it’s uncomfortable to sit there for more than a set or two.
We sat behind the baseline with the TV view for the first set of Sebastian Korda against Tomas Martin Etcheverry. We sat in one corner for the first set of Alex de Minaur against Cameron Norrie which was a different view and better as we sat high enough to be mostly unobstructed and didn’t have any humans sat in front. Norrie-de Minaur was dire and we couldn’t believe de Minaur went onto reach the final!
I thought the MC for Grandstand was excellent and engaging. He tried to get the crowd going but it was pretty flat for our time on Grandstand, not helped out by the weather and quality of tennis.
Court 1
Our only experience of Court 3 was a few minutes of watching Mackenzie McDonald practice. It is tucked in behind the practice courts with seating on either side. No back rests. Good access. Nothing more to add really.
Court 2
This was our favourite court around the grounds as it’s rather hidden at the southern end. There’s just one side for viewing by Grandstand. We had an unobstructed view two times during the day. In the morning, we watched a sleepy, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina practice together. The pair were supposed to play doubles but withdrew later that day. Tsitsipas didn’t look with it at all and turned up almost ten minutes late.
We enjoyed watching Neal Skupski and Wesley Koolhof practice later in the day and they were playing a really intense practice set. It was fun to watch. These are often the highlights of attending a tournament as it’s something that you don’t get to see from watching on TV.
Courts 3 to 5
We didn’t watch any matches on these courts but they were pretty standard outside courts. Court 3 is right at the far southern end behind the Grandstand court and has a stand of seats.
Cynamon Family practice courts
The practice court set-up in Toronto was very similar to the US Open. In the centre of the grounds were four practice courts side-by-side. Adjacent to the four courts, there was a seating stand and space to stand and watch, as well as a spectator stand that spanned behind all four courts (see picture below). We saw the likes of Joe Salisbury, Matt Ebden, Milos Raonic and Ben Shelton. Carlos Alcaraz was practising with Gael Monfils later in the day on the far court. We obviously wanted to watch but the stand behind the courts was busy well before they came out onto court so we didn’t bother in the end.
Grounds and facilities
The courts are nicely spaced out around the grounds leading off from the central concourse so it never felt too busy. One big plus was that the tournament had its own Wi-Fi which was excellent! It’s pretty much non-existent at the UK tournaments so this was a big plus. The connection was pretty stable although you had to re-connect frequently. It seemed to work well in most locations around the grounds.
There are water fill-up stations dotted around the grounds. We used the ones by the practice courts where we never had to wait long to fill up our bottles. There are toilets dotted around the grounds and they were pretty grim by the end of the day. As is the case at all venues, there were often long queues for the women’s toilets.
Food and drink
In the centre of the grounds, next to the Sobeys Stadium, is the Courtyard with a selection of food stalls. Even by 11:45am, it was beginning to get busy. We queued for food for about ten minutes. I bought a chicken sandwich from Harvey’s which cost about $10 CAD. The queue took longer because you had the opportunity to choose your own toppings and sauces. The bro had a pizza from Pizzaville which he said was standard, did the job! There was a stand for The Keg which we didn’t go to at the tournament but we did try the restaurant later on in our trip which we liked.
There was an ice cream stall quite near the Sobeys Stadium where we queued up for ice cream with the umpire, Carlos Bernandes, as you do. I had a maple walnut ice cream which was delicious! Expensive at $7.50 CAD but worth it.
The tournament offers food deliveries directly to your seat via the tournament App. We didn’t try it but we saw the deliveries in the main stadium. It looked liked a good idea. It was annoying with staff running up and down the staircase in the Sobeys Stadium during the matches!
Shopping
The main store is located next to the practice courts. It was mostly tennis gear with only a few pieces of merchandise for the tournament. No purchases made!
Final thoughts
It was great to tick off a new tournament and new country to watch tennis in! To be honest, I doubt i’ll be back in Toronto though and I don’t have any strong desires to go to the tournament again. The highlight was watching Murray’s match on the main stadium. We got cornered by Blair Henley and the social media team at one point when we were heading to the Centre Court. We ended up appearing on the tournament’s Instagram and Facebook stories – I’m still mortified about it 😂. Thankfully they picked one of the bits with my brother.
I think we were unlucky with our order of play which was disappointing. A lot of the matches we wanted to watch were scheduled on the Monday and some of the doubles (Tiafoe-Korda) we had circled were cancelled. Normally I find the schedule for the second day of first round action at the one week Masters 1000 tournaments is better but that was definitely not the case this year. There was only one second round match scheduled on the Tuesday which was at night and there wasn’t much of note going on on the outside courts.
If you have any questions about the National Bank Open in Toronto then i’d be more than happy to help. Please leave a comment or e-mail MooTennisBlog@gmail.com
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