Clay Court Season In Doubt As WTA Cancels All Tournaments Until At Least May

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) have said they will make a decision about future European clay court tournaments in the coming days after suspending play until the first week of May.

All professional tournaments have come to a halt due to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. Charleston, Stuttgart, Istanbul and Prague have all been officially removed from the tour calendar. Meaning that many top players on the women’s tour will be going at least seven weeks without playing a competitive match.

“Due to the ongoing global coronavirus outbreak, the WTA tournaments in Stuttgart, Istanbul and Prague will not be held as scheduled. We regret this is the case for all of our loyal fans, players, sponsors and all those who support women’s professional tennis.” The WTA said in a statement on Monday.
“At this point in time, the WTA Tour is now suspended until May 2. We will make a decision in the week ahead regarding the remaining WTA European clay court events and will continue to monitor this situation closely and its impact on the 2020 WTA Tour season.”

The move comes four days after both the ATP and ITF postponed their activities until the last week of April. Although this could be expanded in the future depending on the coronavirus outbreak hampering Europe.

Some have criticised the WTA for their approach to the ongoing crises. All of the tournaments that have been officially cancelled today were already confirmed by various local officials instead of the governing body. For example german newspaper Bild reported a couple days ago that the Porsche Open in Stuttgart would not be going ahead following a statement issued by the local mayor. The WTA has insisted that they wanted to take time to look at the full picture before coming to a decision.

“Due to the impact of the coronavirus, the holding of the Porsche Grand Prix in April is no longer a realistic option,” says Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG. ‟As a company, we have a societal responsibility. The decision to cancel the tournament was made in the best interests of the health and well-being of everybody.”

The next tournament set to take place is the Madrid Open, which is a combined men’s and women’s event that begins on May 4th. Although that is also in serious doubt. The Spanish health ministry confirmed on Monday that there has been 1000 new cases of Coronavirus over the past 24 hours. Bringing the total to 8,744. 4665 of those cases are in Madrid.

As for the ATP, the closest tournaments yet to be cancelled are in Estoril, Portugal and Munich, Germany. Both are set to get underway during the week commencing April 27th.

Cancelled tournaments

*Run by ITF