Just as the US Open and Roland Garros are struggling to put their tournaments on as the coronavirus pandemic continues to sabotage the sports’ best-laid plans, plans are moving forward to host the 2020 Australian Open, with several contingencies in place.
The current plan is one that calls for physical distancing and a bubble around the event. Despite growing case counts in Melbourne, and a big from New South Wales to host the tournament in 2021, Tennis Australia has every intention of standing put in Melbourne.
Craig Tiley, Australian Open CEO, says his organization is prepared to move “heaven and earth” to keep the even in Melbourne next January.
"Heaven and earth will be moved to make it work in Melbourne,” Tiley told The Age. “I don't see any scenario possible where the Australian Open would move." Tiley says Melbourne Park, the site that has hosted the Australian Open since 1988, is ready to go into bubble mode.
"Melbourne Park itself is a massive quarantine opportunity for us," he said. "The whole network and the whole hub being put next to the city, you can actually create a bubble over Melbourne Park to make it extremely safe. It will be world-leading." Tiley says that the players he has spoken to are very positive about coming to Australia. Even has Victoria has accounted for about one half of the nation’s positive coronavirus cases, the nation as a whole has registered below 13,000 as of Tuesday July 21, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The low numbers could make Australia an ideal place for players to come and spend their training block before the Aussie summer fully kicks in.
"In fact all of them I've spoken to—there's not one that hasn't—are looking to the beginning of 2021 and the beginning of the new season as the new hope for tennis globally,” Tiley said.