On Tuesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the U.S. Open tennis tournament will be held in Queens as scheduled starting on the last day of August.
Taking place from August 31 to September 13, the annual Grand Slam event will take place without spectators but will be broadcast on ESPN as usual.
“It will be held without fans, but you can watch it on TV — and I’ll take that,” Cuomo said at his daily briefing in Albany. “The tennis authorities are going to be taking extraordinary precautions, but that’s going to take place.”
Mike Dowse, the chief executive of the USTA, said this could be a chance for tennis to show it can succeed as a socially distanced sport.
“We recognize the tremendous responsibility of hosting one of the first global sporting events in these challenging times, and we will do so in the safest manner possible, mitigating all potential risks,” he said.
Some prominent players like Nick Kyrgios, Novak Djokovic, Ash Barty and Simona Halep have all indicated they have concerns about playing in a tournament located so close to the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States.
The ATP is trying to make the US Open go ahead. Selfish with everything going on at the moment. Obviously Covid, but also with the riots, together we need to overcome these challenges before tennis returns in my opinion. https://t.co/tEHPvr4miB
— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) June 11, 2020
Smh – people that live in the US of course are pushing the Open to go ahead 🤦🏽♂️ ‘Selfish’ I’ll get my hazmat suit ready for when I travel from Australia and then have to quarantine for 2 weeks on my return.
— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) June 16, 2020
Last week, World No. 1 Djokovic said participating in the tournament would be an “impossible” task due to the coronavirus protocols which will be in place to ensure safety.
“The rules that they told us that we would have to respect to be there, to play at all, they are extreme,” Djokovic told Serbia’s Prva TV. “We would not have access to Manhattan, we would have to sleep in hotels at the airport, to be tested twice or three times per week. Also, we could bring one person to the club, which is really impossible. I mean, you need your coach, then a fitness trainer, then a physiotherapist.”
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