Evelyn Reynolds

In a season full of foiled plans and economic peril, the WTA Tour suffered its biggest blow on Thursday when it was forced to cancel its remaining tournaments in 2020 in China, including its lucrative tour championships: the WTA Finals in Shenzhen.The cancellations, confirmed by a tennis official who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, came two weeks after a Chinese government sports agency recommended that the country call off most international sporting events for the remainder of the year because of the coronavirus pandemic.Steve Simon, the WTA’s chief executive, had expressed hope that China’s government and its tennis officials would allow the tournaments to proceed, just as it was allowing certain winter sports test events to go on ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.Negotiations proved unsuccessful, however, and the women’s tour will now have to cancel all seven events scheduled in October and November in China, which has rapidly become one the tour’s major markets and a key source of revenue.Simon could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday. But in an interview earlier this month, he spoke about the potential impact of losing the China swing, including the WTA Finals, which provided a record $14 million in prize money in its first year in Shenzhen in 2019 with backing from primary sponsor Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company. More

The Citi Open in Washington, D.C., which was scheduled to restart the men’s tennis tour next month, has been canceled for 2020.The tournament was set to begin on Aug. 14 and serve as a lead-in event for the United States Open. But Mark Ein, the Citi Open chairman, said concern about international travel restrictions and recent trends in the coronavirus had led to the cancellation.“When we committed to host the event all the trends were going in our favor, and halfway through the process they all reversed,” Ein said by telephone on Tuesday. “Then we ran out of time. With a little more time we may have been able to overcome the obstacles that were in front of us, but it’s better to make a decision for all the stakeholders before it gets to the last minute.”The decision, made on Monday, will increase doubts about this year’s U.S. Open, which is scheduled to be played without spectators in New York from Aug. 31 to Sept. 13.But Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Open tournament director, reaffirmed Monday that plans remained on track for a doubleheader at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The Western & Southern Open is to be played there from Aug. 22 to 28 as a prelude to the U.S. Open, with players and officials operating inside a health and safety “bubble” similar to those being used by the N.B.A. and other leagues. More

2020 was supposed to be a farewell tour for Bob and Mike Bryan, the incomparable tennis twins, who have long been the darlings of doubles. Then coronavirus canceled it. Will they try again? More

For professional tennis players, the coronavirus pandemic has meant canceled tournaments, lost income and frozen rankings, with the men’s and women’s tours putting their systems on hold in mid-March. Rankings are, in many respects, the coin of the tennis realm: the determining factor in players’ ability to enter events, receive seedings and even earn certain […] More

The French Open, played on red-clay courts, is known generally for being the most crowded Grand Slam tournament. Organizers say they are planning for as many as 20,000 fans daily. More

After an outcry from players, the United States Tennis Association has restored the wheelchair tennis competition to the 2020 United States Open. In the initial plans for the tournament announced last week, the wheelchair events, mixed doubles and the junior and legends events had been eliminated. Part of the reasoning for the cuts was the […] More

Novak Djokovic, the world’s top-ranked male tennis player, said on Tuesday that he and his wife, Jelena, had tested positive for the coronavirus, after days of growing criticism over a tournament he organized after which other players and coaches were also found to be infected. The exhibition tournament, called the Adria Tour, was supposed to […] More

A match on the Adria Tour, an exhibition circuit organized by Novak Djokovic in the Balkans, was canceled on Sunday after a player tested positive for the coronavirus. More