Craig Tiley, Chief Executive of Tennis Australia, has let it be known that the Australian Open, scheduled to start in January next year, will almost certainly be compromised. He’s said that his team is hard at work preparing several contingency plans in the wake of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
TA is modelling and preparing for as many as four scenarios, one of which will see the competition unfolding behind closed doors. Tiley said that the worst possible outcome is no tournament at all, and the best we can hope for at this point is players getting into the country with quarantine requirements being met and spectators limited to Australian citizens only.
The Tennis season looks likely to return in July, just before the US Open, but the Arthur Ashe Stadium where it’s usually held has been temporarily turned into a hospital for New York COVID-19 patients. Organisers will be making a definitive decision on its status next month, but the Coupe Rogers, a key Women’s Warm-Up Tournament in Montreal, got cancelled mid-April. The French Open, currently listed as the last Grand Slam of 2020, will begin at the end of September, just a few weeks after the French ban on sporting events is set to lift.
Issues related to crossing time zones and fielding borders has meant that the discourse around Tennis is very different from that related to other sports worldwide. The latter group is still debating the timing and conditions of their resuming operations, but Tennis players have repeatedly said that their game’s season is as good as finished.
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