US Open ‘150% focused’ on delivering tournament on time and in New York, says USTA

The US Open are ‘150 per cent’ focused on playing the US Open in New York and on time, according to USTA chief executive Stacey Allaster.

Tennis has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, and has been at a total standstill since the start of March.

That has meant that Wimbledon has had to be cancelled for this year, while the French Open has rescheduled for the end of September.

The US Open, though, say they have no intention of allowing the coronavirus crisis to wipe them off the tennis calendar for 2020.

“We continue to be, I would say, 150 per cent focused on staging a safe environment for conducting a US Open at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York on our dates,” Allaster told the Associated Press.

“It’s all I wake up – our team wakes up – thinking about. The idea of an alternative venue, an alternative date…we’ve got a responsibility to explore it, but it doesn’t have a lot of momentum.”

The US Open attracted 850,000 spectators last year, but Allaster says it is “less and less likely” spectators will be allowed inside Flushing Meadows if the tournament goes ahead this year.

Meanwhile, the players themselves will also be subject to strict monitoring.

“Once they come into our, let’s say, ‘US Open world’,” Allaster added, “there will be a combination of daily health questionnaires, daily temperature checks and some nasal or saliva or antibody testing.”

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