The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is continuing to work tirelessly to put in place a health protocol that would allow the US Open to start on 24 August as planned. But another alleged initiative by the USTA, reported by the New York Times reporter Christopher Clarey, is planning another shake-up of the traditional North American tennis summer line-up: some sources internal to the US Tennis Federation have confirmed the existence of a plan to relocate the Western&Southern Open from the Lindner Family Tennis Center of Mason, Ohio to the National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows, New York City.
The Cincinnati area hosts every year a combined tournament that sees an ATP Masters 1000 tournament being played at the same time as a WTA Premier 5. The USTA has informed both the ATP and the WTA of the existence of a project that would see the event being played in its current calendar slot (17-23 August) but at the same location as the US Open. This would see the pro circuit “settle down” in the New York City area for a 4-week period that would include the Western&Southern Open and the US Open, which would start as scheduled on 24 August with the singles qualifying draws.
The idea behind this proposal is to create some economies of scope and scale as the same safety protocols being prepared for the US Open would not have to be replicated in Ohio a couple of weeks earlier, and players and their entourages would be able to remain at the same location for the entire duration of their stay in the United States, thus eliminating the risks connected to internal flights and getting in touch with more people as they change cities and accommodation.
The ATP Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati is owned by the USTA itself, while the WTA Premier 5 is owned by the sports management company Octagon.
As far as the US Open is concerned, there will be no junior or legend competitions, and the cancellation of the wheelchair tennis draws are still under consideration. It appears that the USTA has accepted the introduction of coaching, similarly to what happens in the WTA Tour, in order to increase the entertainment value of a product for which the ESPN is paying 75 million dollars a year until 2025 and that some sources seem to believe is not currently delivering as expected.
At the moment all professional tennis tournaments have been cancelled until the end of July, and the ATP Tour is expected to resume on 3 August with the ATP 500 Citi Open in Washington, DC, while the WTA Tour sees the Mubadala Silicon Valley Open in San Jose, California, as its first event on the schedule. On the following week, the tours were supposed to move to Canada for the annual appointment with the Rogers Cup, however the WTA version in Montreal has already been canceled by the organizers due to a decision by the Province of Quebec (where Montreal is located) to prohibit all mass events until the end of August. However, the ATP Masters 1000 version of the Rogers Cup, scheduled to take place in Toronto, is still officially on the calendar, and the organizer Tennis Canada has confirmed that no decisions pertaining its cancellation will be made before 15 June when both ATP and WTA will update their respective schedules.
