The USTA Board Does Not Decide anything about US Open: Stacey Allaster


The USTA Board Does Not Decide anything about US Open: Stacey Allaster

Stacey Allaster

On Sunday, the Chief Executive of U.S. Tennis Association Stacey Allaster said in a telephonic interview( as quoted by Hindustan Times ) that the apex body of tennis had not made any decisions for tennis to resume.

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“All of this is still fluid,” says Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Tennis Association’s chief executive for professional tennis, in a telephone interview on Saturday.

“We have made no decisions at all.” With that caveat, Allaster added that if the USTA board does decide to go forward with the Open, she expects it to be held at its usual site and in its usual spot on the calendar. The main draw is scheduled to start from Aug.31

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“We continue to be, I would say, 150% focused on staging a safe environment for conducting U.S. Open at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York on our dates. It’s all I wake up — our team wakes up — thinking about,” Allaster said.

“The idea of an alternative venue, an alternative date … we’ve got a responsibility to explore it, but it doesn’t have a lot of momentum.” An announcement should come from “mid-June to end of June,” Allaster said.

Since March, all the authorized tennis competition has been suspended by tennis governing body and is halted till late July. For the first time since World war ll Wimbledon was canceled and the French Open was postponed from May to September.

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“Everybody would agree to the fundamental principles, I’m sure: protecting the health of participants, following the local laws and minimizing the risk of the transmission of the virus,” said Stuart Miller, who is overseeing the ITF’s return-to-tennis policy.

“But then you have to get down into the specific details.” One such detail: The USTA wants to add locker rooms — including at indoor courts that housed hundreds of temporary hospital beds at the height of New York’s coronavirus outbreak — and improve air filtration in existing spaces. Also being considered: no locker-room access until just before a match.

If any player wants to practice then “you come, you practice and return to the hotel”. Allaster said.

The United States Tennis Association (USTA) presented it’s an operational plan to a medical advisory group and that now will be discussed with city, state and federal government officials.

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“The fundamental goal here is to reduce risk”, Allaster said.

The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo is allowing to open professional sports but the games will be played behind the closed doors.

“We are spending a lot of time and energy on all the models, including no fans on site,” Allaster said. “The government will help guide us”. In 2019 about 8.5 lakh people attended the US Open site from the week before the main draw through the finals.

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That, Sherr said, means “forgoing ticketing revenue, forgoing hospitality revenue, forgoing a portion of your sponsorship revenue.”

But TV and digital rights fees, plus remaining sponsorship dollars, are “significant enough that it’s still worth it to go forward with a no-fans-on-site U.S. Open,” he said.