The clay-court Grand Slam has been pushed to September in the wake of the novel Coronavirus, a decision that was criticised by a number of players because of the fact that there was no consultation with them over it.
Sania Mirza file image. (Photo: Seshadri Sukumar/IANS)
After the French Open got postponed until September due to the coronavirus outbreak, ace India tennis player Sania Mirza said that she was unsure how the 2020 French Open would fit in the schedule now that it has become the last Grand Slam of the year.
Notably, the clay-court event which was slated to be played between May 24 and June 7, will now commence on September 20 and will conclude on October 4, according to its revised date due to the spread of COVID-19.
However, the decision was criticised by a number of players because of the fact that there was no consultation with them over it.
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“I just think that there’s a lot going (on) in the world right now and everybody has their hands full. Sure, the players should have been informed. I did get an email from the federation but I was asleep then. Once I was up, I saw the email and then the tweet and spoke to a couple of players and they were obviously very irritated because they first found out about it on Twitter,” Sania said as quoted by IANS via ESPN.
The postponed date of Roland Garros will see it follow US Open, a hard court tournament to be played in August–September.
“I’m not sure how the French Open is going to fit into the schedule. Hopefully, things blow over and we should be able to play the US swing. But I don’t know how we are going to suddenly play a clay tournament one week after the hard court season,” Sania said.
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