The corona virus and COVID-19 are certainly serious in most every area of the United States and around the world. It has affected the tennis world with Indian Wells being postponed earlier this week and as I write this, the ATP and ITF suspending tournament play for 6 weeks. And we've seen most major sports affected including suspension of the NBA and NHL seasons, and many NCAA sports being affected.
But as I wrote, in my section USTA League play had continued with permission to be flexible on getting matches in and penalties for defaulting matches being suspended. As far as I know, no other section had cancelled play, until now!
As of an hour ago, USTA Eastern posted that they are suspending "all sanctioned junior and adult tournaments, adult League matches and Junior Team Tennis matches effective immediately for the entire section up to and including April 1st, 2020".
This is certainly exercising "an abundance of caution" and is probably the safe thing to do. It does feel a bit extreme to me though given that tennis is played on opposite sides of the net with no body contact and players generally being a reasonable distance apart. The gotcha is likely the sharing of touching a tennis ball though and how the virus could be transferred that way.
What do you think? Is it appropriate to suspend all sanctioned play? Or is that going a bit overboard?
Certainly players can use this opportunity to still go play and simply exercise good hygiene practices to avoid an issues. If you are in Eastern or any other section that suspends play, will you still play tennis or be extra safe by not playing at all?
Update: I understand the New England section has notified players that USTA events are suspended through the end of March.
Word on the street is that USTA National has asked the sections not to post anything for the next couple of hours to determine whether to cancel all play nationally or to allow the sections to make that determination themselves.
ReplyDeleteSeems quite unnecessary right now. Unfortunately, now that one section(two, that is) has done it, every section will follow suit shortly.
ReplyDeleteNorCal has cancelled all league play through March 31st.
ReplyDeleteAnd now the whole usta season is canceled! What a scam this virus turned out to be. Usta going to lose money big time.
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