The six events added to the ATP Tour after China Swing is cancelled

ATP Tour

James Richardson
July 21, 2022

The ATP Tour has sought to fill some gaps left in its schedule by the cancellation of the China swing.

China continues to pursue its zero-Covid policy making a tour stop difficult at best, and it seems all parties believe it would be better to call the whole thing off.

The ATP are loathe to have any unnecessary holes in the schedule after the pandemic nightmare and stand-in events have been announced.

Tour boss Andrea Gaudenzi has announced six one-off ATP 250 tournaments, issued as single-year event licenses for the 2022 season to replace the China swing.

Europe is the destination for three of the events with two being staged in Gaudenzi’s native Italy and one in Spain, while the United States, South Korea and Israel will host the others.

The first of those events slots into week 38 of the ATP Tour schedule for 2022 and will be held in San Diego. It will be an outdoor hard court tournament.

The following week we will see two events running parallel, one in Seoul, South Korea, played outdoors and another in Tel Aviv, Israel that is set to take place indoors.

The transition to the indoor season is evident with both Florence and Gijon set to keep the lid on their events, so to speak.

ATP Tour tennis also returns to Naples which stages a challenger event annually on clay and was the venue for the historic Campionato Partenopeo, a tournament which held great significance in Italy before the second world war.

However, this particular stop will be staged on outdoor hard courts.

The Tennis Napoli Open will run in the same week as the already scheduled ATP 250 events in Antwerp and Stockholm with each event set to accommodate 28 entrants.

Also altered are the Astana Open in Nur-Sultan and the Rakuten Japan Open in Tokyo which will now be staged as ATP 500 events.

Andrea Gaudenzi, ATP Chairman, said: “As a global sport we continue to manage the impacts of the pandemic.

“Event cancellations are an unfortunate reality, and we wish our affected tournament members and fans well.

“At the same time, it’s incredibly encouraging to have many great cities step up to host ATP Tour tennis this season.

“This shows the strong international interest in our product and validates the agile approach we’ve taken in responding to fast-changing circumstances.

“We would like to thank all stakeholders involved in this process and look forward to an exciting second half of the season.”