US Open tennis plan in works, including group flights, COVID tests

Charter flights to ferry U.S. Open tennis players and limited entourages from Europe, South America and the Middle East to New York. Negative coronavirus tests before traveling. Centralized housing. Daily temperature checks.

No spectators. Fewer on-court officials. No locker room access on practice days.

All are among the scenarios being considered for the 2020 U.S. Open — if it is held at all amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“All of this is still fluid,” Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Tennis Association’s chief executive for professional tennis, said in a telephone interview Saturday. “We have made no decisions at all.”

The USTA presented its operational plan to a medical advisory group Friday.

Allaster said 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 Aug. 31. An announcement should come from “mid-June to end of June,” Allaster said.

Allaster addressed the rumor that the U.S. Open would have best-of-three-set matches in men’s singles, saying the matter “has hardly been discussed” and added “If the players came to us and said, ‘That is something we want to do,’ we would consider it.”

All sanctioned competition has been suspended by the ATP, WTA and International Tennis Federation since March and is on hold until late July. The French Open was postponed from May to September; Wimbledon was canceled for the first time since 1945.

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