Thursday, April 8th, 2021
French Open are postponed
Corona is causing the tennis world to tumble again
The French Open will be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Only by a week, but that’s causing big problems for the tennis world. The time to Wimbledon is running out. And what happens to the event in Stuttgart that would suddenly be held at the same time?
The coronavirus pandemic is again this year for a postponement of the French Open and for new scheduling problems on the tennis tour. Instead of several months as in 2020, the Grand Slam tournament in Paris will be postponed by a week this time and will now be held from May 30th to June 13th, as the organizers announced. The tournament was actually scheduled from May 23 to June 6, leaving three weeks open for the already short grass season, including a preparatory tournament in Stuttgart.
But the flagship product of the French tennis federation should be played in front of the “largest possible number of fans”, while at the same time health and safety should be guaranteed. Every week is important for this and can make a difference.
The result: According to the current status, the relocation leads to scheduling collisions with the previously planned start of the lawn season. On June 7th the tournaments in Stuttgart, Nottingham and in ‘s-Hertogenbosch should begin. “In order to avoid further effects on the rest of the calendar, the 2021 grass season will be shortened by one week,” said the Wimbledon organizers. Just two weeks after the French Open finals, which have now been moved to June 12th and 13th, Wimbledon is set to begin on June 28th as planned.
“Flexible access to the game calendar”
Last year, the Grand Slam tournament on the London grass pitches was canceled for the first time since World War II. The winners of the French Open – Iga Swiatek, Rafael Nadal and the doubles Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies – were only announced in mid-October. In 2020, the French tennis association initially pulled through the relocation on its own and caused criticism.
“In order to master the challenges of the pandemic, you have had to have flexible access to the game calendar in tennis over the past twelve months, and that is still the case,” said a statement from the professional organizations ATP and WTA this time. We are working on optimizing the calendar with the tournaments concerned. Solutions should be made known “in due course”. The other Grand Slam tournaments also support the postponement. Everything possible will be done for the Grand Slams so that they can be held successfully, said the director of the Grand Slam board, Ugo Valensi.
Surprisingly, the postponement no longer came. The French Minister of Sport Roxana Maracineanu had already confirmed her thoughts on this last week. Stricter corona measures have been in force for at least four weeks in all of France since last weekend, in Paris they were largely in effect before. At the beginning of the year, the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the tennis season, was postponed.
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