February/March 2020 Tournaments

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The AO 2020 left us with a no-surprise winner of the men's title and a predictably unpredictable ladies' champion.

We now move on to the mixture of indoor/outdoor events that comprise the period before the European clay-court season kicks off.

With more than 2,600pts bagged already in 2020, Djoko could stay top for the rest of the year and has very few points to defend at the sunshine double of IW and Miami. Thiem and Federer, contrastingly, have some big points that will come off if they don't go deep at IW/Miami.

You always feel Rafa is saving himself for the clay at this time of the year. He makes sure he's in peak condition for RG.

As for the women, who dares make a prediction? A case can be made out not just for anyone winning the smaller tourneys but also the Slams. Amid the unpredictability, Halep stands out as a model of consistency so it's not a bad bet to put money on her doing well over the next few weeks.

Now talk of stopping the main tour until early May. No definite news yet but decision expected soon.

sirfredperry wrote:Now talk of stopping the main tour until early May. No definite news yet but decision expected soon.

Federer is a genius, he saw this coming.

It's now official: ATP tour stopped until April 27, with the WTA likely to be scrapped until then, too.

ATP say the impact on the rankings will be "carefully considered". As Soul R says above, Federer could not have timed his surgery any better.

The impact on rankings is an interesting problem; removing all points earned over the next 6 weeks would be unfair to players that happened to plan high playing activity during that period last year as they, obviously, will not have the opportunity to defend those points. Perhaps they could remove points earned last year from tournaments that are rearranged later in the year, at the time they're played, and leave the points from those that aren’t until next year?

No way is the Olympics going to happen this year.

On the flip side, you could even argue, we might of seen the last of Federer. In theory, we don’t know how severe this will become, the entire season, and, Olympics, could be a write off. At 39, RF might just call it quits. Same could happen in other sports, particularly sportsmen and women of a certain age.

ATP announce French Open will start September 20. No news about Wimbledon or the USO.

Suggests that, maybe - and there's nothing official yet - that Wimbledon and the USO may have been scrapped for this year.

No floodlighting on outside courts at SW19 so they can't play at any time other than mid-summer.

If the US Open goes ahead, as planned, it would finish one week before the start of the rescheduled, FO? I imagine you will see players picking one, over the other.

Surely the GS committees have got together on this.

But knowing the French (Xenophobia alert, here) they've gone unilaterally and scheduled their tournament with no regard to Wimbledon or the USO.

Big row now about what appears, indeed, to be a unilateral decision by the French over their Open.

It seems they have acted completely off their own bat without consulting anyone. Some of the players are mystified.

Vasek Pospisil, a member of the ATP player council, has described the French decision as "insane".

I could imagine that the Grand Slams could do whatever they wanted to do within their country's health and safety special emergency criteria given their history and the fact it is their "open", but then the ATP union could complain as could others.  

The important announcement is that if the French Open 2020 is going to run it won't occur before mid-September.  

The Australian Open for much of its history was regional - predominantly filled with regional players.  Some tournaments in the past had the previous years champion play the winner of a small knockout tournament to determine who would win the title for that year.

I'm fairly sure the ATP have the final say on it considering it is their players who will be competing.

ATP have announced a freezing of ranking points (good news for Federer, among others) for the time being.

Also, with the WTA, they have said there would be no play at least until the end of the European clay-court season.

Really can't see Wimbledon getting played this year although it's likely things might pick up later in the year.

For sports fans this is worst than the Second World War. At least there was some sport during that period. There were war-time soccer internationals and also unofficial FA Cup matches.

Millions of guys round the world are having to talk to their wives/girlfriends and not spend meal-times and other occasions glued to their devices looking at latest scores.