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The WTA Pan Pacific Open in Japan, certainly one of Asia’s high girls’s tennis tournaments, has been scrapped for the primary time due to the coronavirus, organisers stated Tuesday. The cancellation of the occasion, which was scheduled for November and was gained by Japan’s Naomi Osaka final 12 months, follows final week’s axing of all worldwide tennis tournaments in China for 2020. The Pan Pacific’s demise ends a steady run for the match since 1984 and leaves Asia with just one Women’s Tennis Association occasion, October’s Korea Open, on this 12 months’s coronavirus-wrecked schedule.
It can be one other blow for sport in Japan after the Tokyo Olympics, initially resulting from begin final week, have been postponed for a 12 months over COVID-19.
“We were trying to find ways (to hold the Pan Pacific Open), such as having no audience or limiting the number of spectators,” organisers stated in an announcement.
“But we reached the tough conclusion that we have to cancel the tournament given the difficulty of ensuring the safety” of all concerned, they added.
The match had already been postponed from September to November, with organisers hoping the delay would enable them to carry the occasion.
Last 12 months’s Pan Pacific Open drew outsize consideration in Japan because of hometown hero Osaka, who turned the primary Japanese participant to win the match since Kimiko Date in 1995.
Her victory was all of the sweeter for occurring within the metropolis of Osaka, the place the charismatic star was born.
The Pan Pacific Open is barely the newest sports activities occasion to fall by the wayside because the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.
Last week, the ATP and WTA introduced all worldwide tennis tournaments in China, together with the Shanghai Masters and WTA Finals, can be cancelled due to the virus.
The transfer got here after China stated it will not stage most worldwide sports activities occasions for the remainder of 2020, in a bid to maintain the pandemic in examine.
The world tennis season has been at a standstill since mid-March as a result of virus outbreak worldwide, and is struggling to restart.
The Cincinnati Open and US Open are nonetheless scheduled to happen back-to-back in New York from August 20, regardless of a number of main figures in males’s tennis casting doubts over the hardcourt Grand Slam.
The WTA tour is scheduled to restart on August three in Palermo, Italy, making it the primary occasion on the reshuffled calendar.
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Organisers of the Korea Open, Asia’s final remaining match on this 12 months’s WTA calendar, advised AFP they have been “monitoring the situation” however had not made any determination to cancel.
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