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The stadium announcer at Palermo on Monday wished a heat and welcome return to tennis lovers because the WTA event in Italy began 5 months after the final one, with bottles of hand sanitiser hooked up to the nets. The occasion comes simply weeks earlier than the US Open and Roland Garros double-header however misplaced unique prime seed Simona Halep to lingering well being issues whereas an unnamed participant withdrew from qualifying after testing optimistic for COVID-19. There had been some 350 followers allowed right into a venue that usually holds 1,500.
Sofia Kenin and Elina Svitolina captured titles on March 8, the final day of aggressive matches earlier than the circuit was placed on maintain because the tennis calendar was shaken the wrong way up.
The prestigious Indian Wells occasion within the California desert turned the primary competitors axed because of the pandemic. The French Open was then moved to late September with Wimbledon cancelled for the primary time since World War II.
When Croatia’s Donna Vekic and the Netherlands’ Arantxa Rus took to the clay-court late on Monday some 150 days after the game’s hiatus began they weren’t carrying face masks.
After Vekic received there was a video press-conference the place she informed media she was pleased to have remembered play tennis.
“It’s weird, sometimes funny with all the protocols, masks on your face, visors and screens in the transport,” she mentioned.
“Of course it’s necessary, but so different from before — it seems unreal,” she mentioned.
The line judges and umpire had been masked and the gamers needed to stand behind a social distancing line to strategy them.
The stands in Sicily are cleared and disinfected after every match.
Players within the second assembly had been informed politely to put on their masks throughout the remaining durations and to sanitise their palms from the allotting bottles hooked up to the web poles.
There had been hand gel bottles positioned in all places within the passages between the seats and within the entrances.
Hand shaking or hugging after the matches is forbidden with gamers tapping rackets over the web from a secure distance.
Top seed Petra Martic, who faces Alison van Uytvanck on Tuesday, mentioned it was an honour to be again.
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“It’s been so long since I was at a tournament, so long since I played, so long since I got this adrenaline rush from playing. It’s a privilege being back on court,” she mentioned.
The males should wait till the Western and Southern Open — moved from its conventional Cincinnati residence to New York — begins on August 22, after the event in Washington DC was known as off.
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