The WTA and ATP tours have resumed play in an attempt to salvage the 2020 season, but the risk posed by the pandemic to international professional tennis has hardly diminished.
The ATP Tour unveiled a 13-tournament schedule in mid-August that offered some hope for the beleaguered men’s tennis circuit. But the WTA Tour released a 20-event slate earlier this summer, only for seven of the tournaments to soon be wiped out by a Chinese ban on international sporting events within its borders. It was a reminder that the pandemic can dash any plans in a matter of days.
“As anyone knows from 2020, predicting what will happen with the coronavirus is very hard to do,” WTA Chief Executive Officer Steve Simon told Sports Business Journal earlier this month in an email.
The ATP is planning on its lucrative Nitto ATP Finals taking place at London’s O2 Arena in November as planned, but without fans in the building. Holding that event will be crucial for the men’s tour to offset some of the financial hurt of 2020. A source indicated the 2018 event brought in close to $17 million in revenue for the ATP. The WTA wasn’t so lucky this year; its Shiseido WTA Finals, held in Shenzhen, concluded last November with record-setting prize money of $14 million, but this year’s edition was scrapped as part of the Chinese international sports ban.
Both tours have said they’re willing to add more events to the calendar, including one-offs, such as the Octagon-owned WTA Top Seed Open held earlier this month in Lexington, Ky., to fill the void left by dozens of tournament cancellations. That will create opportunities for ambitious clubs like the Top Seed Club, giving them an opportunity to audition in a year where it’s possible that more tournament sanctions — which give ownership a spot on the WTA or ATP calendar — will change hands than usual.
Even with the WTA and ATP spending most of the remainder of the year in Europe, navigating travel restrictions will be challenging as certain countries’ COVID outbreaks wax and wane. Travel within the European Union is normally seamless, but that hasn’t been the case during the pandemic as countries cope with their widely differing COVID situations, and the tours will have to work overtime on diplomacy to ensure their players can move freely through borders. Non-EU countries with upcoming tournaments, such as Russia and South Korea, will pose unique travel issues in their own right due to the pandemic.
Reestablishing and maintaining the tours’ COVID-free environments at each new stop — seven countries for the WTA and 10 for the ATP — will be key in avoiding outbreaks among players or tour staff and completing the season. Protocols have so far been successful, identifying and isolating a player that tested positive at a WTA tournament in Palermo in early August, while the Kentucky WTA event had no positive tests. Last week, an
asymptomatic non-player tested positive during initial checks (there were over 1,400 tests for players, workers and tour staff) at the Western & Southern Open in New York.
