Tour planners live in hope, working 68 weeks ahead

DESPITE the growing possibility of a total wipeout of professional tennis this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, ATP Tour chief Andrea Gaudenzi is refusing to give up on 2020 just yet.

The tennis season was suspended in early March due to the Covid19 outbreak, and the hiatus will continue at least until midJuly as many countries remain in lockdown.

Wimbledon has been cancelled and the French Open postponed from its usual May start to September, while the status of the US Open, scheduled for late August, is still unclear.

Many people, including 19time grand slam winner Rafa Nadal, have voiced doubts about whether the sport can return in 2020 because players would need to travel around the world to compete.

‘‘It would be unwise to call it quits now,’’ Gaudenzi said. ‘‘Nobody knows what will happen. We want to keep an optimistic overview.

‘‘Obviously, there could be a subset of options, which is playing with closed gates or deciding how to deal with travel restrictions. But we have not made these decisions so far because they are all hypothetical scenarios.’’

The tour is working on a time frame of six to eight weeks to decide on tournaments.

‘‘We have set a deadline of May 15 for the tournaments in July, post Wimbledon,’’ said the Italian, who reached a careerhigh singles ranking of 18.

‘‘And June 1 for the tournaments in August. So we are, in principle, dealing it on, I would say, six to eight weeks in advance . . . Longer than that, it would be foolish to make decisions, in my opinion.’’

The United States Tennis Association is in charge of the US

Open, scheduled to run from August 31 until September 13 on the hardcourts of New York.

‘‘Their announcement might be a little bit later, we don’t know,’’ Gaudenzi said.

‘‘Once we get to the beginning of June, we will probably know more about the US summer.’’

While professional soccer leagues around Europe are gearing up for a return, international travel restrictions make it tougher for tennis to restart.

‘‘You can have an estimate that it’s going to be fairly difficult and unlikely that all these countries will align to one single policy relating to travel restrictions,’’ Gaudenzi said.

‘‘Australia today, for example, is probably in a completely different phase than the United Kingdom. You look at Sweden: they have taken a completely different approach. So we could play a tournament in Sweden probably today. But can we travel 100 players to Sweden today? No. So that’s the challenge.’’

The ATP and the WTA recently joined forces with the International Tennis Federation and the boards of the four grand slam tournaments to raise more than $US6 million ($NZ9.8 million) to help lowerlevel players affected by the shutdown.

Roger Federer recently called for a merger between the governing bodies, and both Gaudenzi and his WTA counterpart Steve Simon welcomed the suggestion.

‘‘It was a great effort. I hope it’s just the beginning of a future productive collaboration, which is much needed in our sport if we want to grow and become one of the best,’’ Gaudenzi said. — Reuters

❛ It would be unwise

to call it quits now. Nobody knows what will

happen