Players need assurance that they would not face mandatory quarantine upon returning to Europe from the US Open before travelling to New York amid the COVID-19 pandemic, former world number one Andy Murray has said.<\/p>\n
Organisers United States Tennis Association (USTA) will set up a strict bio-security \u2018bubble\u2019 to minimise the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus during the Grand Slam, which will be played from August 31 to September 13.<\/p>\n
The Western & Southern Open, which was relocated from Cincinnati this year because of COVID-19, will also be held at Flushing Meadows, New York from Aug. 20-28 and will serve as a tune-up for the hardcourt Grand Slam. Following the 1000 Masters event in Cincinnati, under normal circumstances\u00a0 the US would be the final grand slam to be played in the year. However, due to Covid-19 and its accompanied issues, the French Open was delayed from early on this year and rescheduled for the end of September. Mandatory quarantine would rule out players\u2019 participation in other ATP and WTA claycourt events scheduled in Europe before the French Open from the end of September.<\/p>\n
The two major clay-court events in the lead up to Roland Garros are in Madrid (Sept. 13-20) and Rome (Sept. 20-27). While Spain does not require mandatory quarantine, Italy would need travellers to quarantine for 14 days if coming from the U.S. The USTA has said the organisers are working with relevant authorities to resolve issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy understanding is that it would be sorted before we go to America. But things can change in the next 10 to 12 days,\u201d Murray told British media. \u201cHopefully before we leave, the players will have the assurances that, when they come back from America, they won\u2019t have to quarantine for two weeks. If that is the case, and if you do well in the US Open, you can\u2019t just arrive on the Sunday before the French Open starts on the Monday. That\u2019s not going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unites States has over 4.68 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 with more than 155,000 deaths. Murray, a three-times Grand Slam winner, has not played competitively since November due to hip problems but took part in some exhibition events recently with the professional circuit shut. The 33-year-old said he is willing to take the travel \u201crisk\u201d as he missed playing in big events.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe situation I\u2019ve been in the last few years, I\u2019ve not had opportunity to play in many Slams. I don\u2019t know how many I\u2019ll have left,\u201d Murray said. \u201cSo, while I\u2019m feeling relatively decent \u2026 obviously there is a risk there, but I want to try and play in them and enjoy the biggest events again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Open is scheduled to begin on the 31st of August, with the final being played on the 13th of September. This would mark the return of grand slams in a year where one has already been cancelled and another has been rescheduled entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":37376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[326,202],"class_list":["post-16516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-andy-murray","tag-tennis"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}