Montevarchi hosts first Valdarno Open as Lasgoity joins field
Montevarchi’s Padel Club has become the center of a small but pointed land grab in Italian padel, with the MS Open 1500 Città di Montevarchi staging the first Open tournament ever held in Valdarno. The event, official on the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation calendar, began on June 26 and runs through Sunday, July 5, with 34 pairs entered and a €1,500 prize pool.
The field has drawn players from several regions of Italy, which is exactly the kind of traffic a first-time Open can generate for a club looking to move beyond local play. Juan Manuel Lasgoity gives the draw extra weight. The FIP lists the Buenos Aires-born player as 27 years old, 1.90 meters tall and ranked 221 as of June 29, 2026, a profile that marks him as one of the more recognisable names in a regional field built around a mix of everyday competitors and stronger national-level operators.
The tournament’s format is part of the story as well. Rather than locking the event into a narrow category, the Open has been built to accommodate different levels in the same draw, giving the competition a deeper and more crowded ladder than a standard one-division event. That structure, along with the arrival of players from outside the immediate Valdarno area, helps explain why the event has been framed as a marker of how quickly padel is expanding across Montevarchi, San Giovanni Valdarno, Terranuova Bracciolini, Cavriglia and Reggello.
The organization also points to a broader push behind the event. MS Arredamenti of San Giovanni Valdarno is working with Padel Club di Montevarchi, a partnership that signals real local investment rather than a one-off rental of courts and dates. On Saturday, July 4, Arkadia Onlus is scheduled to host an initiative focused on independence and inclusion for people with disabilities, adding a community layer to a tournament that is meant to do more than crown a winner. Arkadia Onlus says it has worked since 2009 on autonomy and life-project support for people with disabilities in the Valdarno Aretino through socio-educational, sporting and creative programs.
The closing weekend will bring the decisive matches, with round-of-16 play at 9:30 a.m., quarterfinals at 3:30 p.m., Sunday semifinals at 9:30 a.m. and the final at 11:00 a.m., followed by an official dinner for players, organisers, sponsors and fans. Montevarchi has already shown it can host major sports traffic, from youth artistic gymnastics national finals to its local padel scene, and the first Valdarno Open now gives the town a new entry point into the national padel calendar.