Tennis has been halted for more than 3 months and the various organisms are trying to find new solutions on how to restart the tours safely.
The most obvious and safe solution is to stage tournaments without fans. However, besides the economic impact, the events would be without the right atmosphere. Therefore, some tournaments are considering the possibility of been staged with a reduced amount of fans so as to preserve the essential social distancing.
Playing with fans
Novak Djokovic’s Adria Tour, unfortunately, didn’t give the best example on how to stage an event during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some players and members of the teams were found positive after a complete lack of social distancing. The outcome of this exhibition made many people uncomfortable of having competitions staged with fans.
An exhibition in Berlin will take place in a couple of weeks times with 800 fans and now the WTA tournament in Prague announces the idea of hosting 2,000 fans. The competition will be played on 10-16th of August with the presence of the likes of Karolina Pliskova and Petra Kvitova.
The tournament director David Trunda talked about mobile stands.
“We are already in talks with the top Czech players. We will prepare mobile stands with a capacity of 2,000 seats. It’s a new tournament which has become part of the WTA’s provisional calendar for this year,” he commented.
Czech Tennis Association head Ivo Kaderka sounded confident in his statement stressing the fact that they have it clear on how to successfully stage the tournament.
“The WTA was looking for places and organizers to prepare a quality tournament fast in these strange times. We have capitalized on references we had gained owing to the first tournament of the post-coronavirus era, which was played on Sparta courts and which turned out a success,” he added.
The Coronavirus in the Czech Republic
As per www.worldometers.info, the Coronavirus infection is climbing again in the Czech Republic after the reopening. However, “only” 349 deaths have been reported since the outbreak.
