Like many sports, tennis has been utterly rocked by the COVID-19 crisis. So much so that many major events have been shut off, unlikely to reappear on what will become a deeply truncated season. This is likely to continue for some time, with the WTA announcing the new schedule for the 2020 calendar. At the time of writing, this provisional calendar houses just 20 tournaments – including the Shenzhen based Shiseido WTA Finals.
Players will e happy to know that some kind of tournament plan is coming together, though, helping to bring tennis back to the TV for spectators to enjoy. The selected events will begin with the Palermo Ladies Open on August 3rd, bringing back competitive WTA tennis after a five-month hiatus due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
This will see events take part across the country until the final events in November, culminating with the Guangzhou Open on November 23rd. other major WTA events to have survived the issue has been the Roland Garros tournament, the China Open and the VTB Kremlin Cup.
Expect more tournaments to be announced, or dates to change, should the COVID-19 crisis begin to dissipate across the world. However, given the tournament calendar stretches into the latter half of the year, we should expect some kind of change should the virus rise up again in the dreaded ‘second wave’ expected to arrive in the winter of 2020.
For that reason, take the calendar as intended; a provisional start.
