Tennis

With testing, quarantine and isolation requirements all but gone, tennis finally seems to have entered a stage of pandemic apathy, much like a lot of ...

Officials with the men’s and women’s tours said regardless of infection levels, their organizations had no intention of resuming regular testing or restricting player movements. There was no mandatory testing for Wimbledon or the French Open. People are confused about what they must do if they get the sniffles or a sore throat, and tennis players are no different. “For some people some rules are fine; for the others rules are not fine. A rescheduled French Open followed in the chill of a Paris fall with just a few hundred fans allowed. Australian officials ended up deporting him because they said he might encourage other people not to get vaccinated, a drama that dominated the run-up to the tournament and its first days. If there are some rules, we need to follow the rules. Its major organizers canceled or postponed everything in the spring and early summer of 2020, though Djokovic held an exhibition tournament that ended up being something of a superspreader event. Many players said they were not sure exactly what the rules were from tournament to tournament for those who started not to feel well. The frequent travel and communal locker rooms made the players something like sitting ducks, always one nasal swab away from being locked in a hotel room for 10 days, sometimes far from home, regardless of how careful they might have been. With the Moscow-born, Kazakhstan-representing Elena Rybakina making the women’s singles final, barring Russian players does not necessarily make a competition free of Russian players. The 2020 U.S. Open took place on schedule in late summer without spectators. Rafael Nadal can play top-level tennis with a zombie foot and a tear in an abdominal muscle, but only for so long.