There will be no ATP tennis for a period of six weeks after it was earlier announced the Miami Open was to be postponed as well because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Following on the close heels of the postponement announcement by the Indian Wells Open organisers and the Fed Cup, the Miami Open also announced they were cancelling the event. This was after Miami-Dade County opted to ban all mass gatherings in a bid to contain the outbreak.
Now there will be no ATP tennis till April 27 following the decision to suspend events for six weeks, which means the Houston Open, Marrakech Open, Monte-Carlo Masters, Barcelona Open and the Budapest Open will all be cancelled.
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According to a press release by the men’s tennis organising body:
“The ATP has announced a six-week suspension of the men’s professional tennis tour due to escalating health and safety issues arising from the global outbreak of COVID-19. The suspension means all ATP Tour and ATP Challenger Tour events scheduled up to and inclusive of the week of April 20 will not take place.”
There’s also news filtering in Wimbledon wouldn’t go ahead as planned because they are wary of playing the tournament to empty stands. According to a report in the Sportsmail, the All England Club has intimated they would prefer not having Wimbledon hosted instead of doing so without fans.
This is after the World Health Organisation has declared the coronavirus a pandemic and travel from various countries to the USA was banned by the government.
ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said:
“This is not a decision that was taken lightly and it represents a great loss for our tournaments, players, and fans worldwide. However we believe this is the responsible action needed at this time in order to protect the health and safety of our players, staff, the wider tennis community and general public health in the face of this global pandemic.”
Interestingly, the Miami Open organisers had earlier said the tournament will be played as planned but following the increase in the number of cases and the WHO announcement, they were left without options.
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