Sam Querry during his round of 16 match against Tennys Sandgren on court 12 on day seven of the ... [+]
When the top eight American men’s tennis players gather this weekend in Georgia for the first American professional sporting event with fans since the COVID-19 pandemic, they plan to do things differently than Novak Djokovic and company did recently on the ill-fated Adria Tour.
They say they won’t be high-fiving each other on the court. They won’t be congregating away from tennis for pickup basketball and soccer games. And they most certainly won’t be out dancing shirtless at the club.
“We’re not doing any of that,” Sam Querrey, a Californian ranked No. 45 in the world, said Thursday by phone. “We’re not high-fiving, we’re not going out to player parties. We’re going [from the] hotel to the courts.”
Querrey and seven other top American men are participating in the DraftKings All-American Team Cup at Life Time Athletic and Tennis in Peachtree Corners, about 30 miles Northeast of Atlanta. The event runs July 3-5 and will tip off on Tennis Channel on Friday at noon with Querrey against Frances Tiafoe. The event, the first pro sporting event on American soil with fans since the pandemic, was first reported by Forbes SportsMoney.
The event will be limited to 450 fans per day — about 30 percent capacity of the stadium. There will be a guaranteed six-feet social distancing space in between each ticket block sold and tickets will only be sold in every other row, tournament director Eddie Gonzalez said.
“I think it’s a good thing,” said Querrey, a Wimbledon semifinalist in 2017 and the owner of 10 career singles titles. “I don’t think tennis can just sit on the sidelines and wait for a vaccine. I think there’s a way to come back in a safe and proper way and I know Novak’s Adria Tour didn’t do a great job and that’s the only thing anyone’s talking about.
“I’ve played two events in California that had no fans. We did one last weekend in Miami [organized by JC Aragone]. The women did a big one in Charleston and so there’s been a bunch of events that have worked out really well with limited or no fans and those ones don’t get talked about, which is unfortunate.”
In the aftermath of the catastrophic Adria Tour in Serbia and Croatia, Djokovic and his wife Jelena, Grigor Dimitrov, Borna Coric and Victor Troicki all tested positive for coronavirus, as did several others, including Goran Ivanisevic, Djokovic’s coach.
The story triggered negative headlines for tennis around the world, with Djokovic taking the brunt of it. Nick Kyrgios, normally known as a bad boy of tennis for his on-court antics, suddenly appeared like the voice of reason when he castigated Djokovic and later Sascha Zverev, who was videotaped out clubbing less than a week after he said he would self-isolate for 14 days despite not testing positive.
Tennys Sandgren, a native of Tennessee ranked No. 55 in the world, said the American players in Georgia are determined to avoid the mistakes made on the Adria Tour — where there was no social distancing whatsoever and fans sat closely together.
“We’re not going to go out clubbing and we’re not going to to go concerts and we’re going to try to be smart about it and follow some of the guidelines and be careful while still going out in the world a little bit and not staying in our homes,” he said by phone.
There are certainly some doubters on social media and in the tennis world about having the event in Georgia, which has nearly 80,000 COVID-19 cases with nearly 3,000 deaths.
“We’re trying to keep the sport moving while being smart,” Sandgren said. “We haven’t really proven otherwise if that’s going to work or not, but we hope it’s going to work. We’ll see what happens.”
Asked if he planned to be out at the club shirtless and dancing during the event, Sandgren added, “No we won’t. I think it’s a big enough risk to be going out and playing tournaments and playing events, so I don’t think we need to add extra risk by doing that.”
Looking ahead to the rest of the summer, both Querrey and Sandgren said they are looking forward to playing the U.S. Open (Aug. 31-Sept. 13), even though there will be no fans or media in attendance. The news that the Open would occur as scheduled despite the pandemic was first reported last month by Forbes SportsMoney.
“I think it’s good for the sport if we’re able to get it off and get the tournament played,” Sandgren said. “I think they’ve put a lot of guidelines and precautions in play, and I think it’s going to work out well.
“Obviously, New York has had a tough time with the coronavirus but we’ll see how it goes. I think the USTA has done enough where we should be in a safe environment and the tournament should go off fairly smoothly.”
While 23-time-major champ Serena Williams is set to play for the women, on the men’s side it remains unclear whether Djokovic and/or defending champion Rafael Nadal will come to New York. Both have expressed concerns about the virus and the restrictions in place (including limiting players to one or two guests on a daily basis) — and that was before Djokovic tested positive. A number of other top European players have also tested positive, as mentioned above, while 20-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer is done for the season with knee surgery.
That could open things up for other players, including the top Americans, to win the title. No American man has won a major since Andy Roddick captured the Open in 2003. Meantime, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have combined to win the last 13 major titles dating to the 2016 U.S. Open.
“It does open up the draw for someone else to win it. I would love to win it,” said Querrey, who is still seeking his first career major. “But tennis has been great because that been been Roger, Rafa, Novak for 15 straight years. Golf was great when it was Tiger [Woods] and Phil [Mickelson]. I think dominance by one [person] or a small group of people in any one sport is really good for that sport.
“If we don’t have that for one U.S. Open, it’s not going to make or break anything. It’s more important for the game of tennis that we play the U.S. Open and get it back going than it is for those two guys to play the event.”
Querrey speculated that if Nadal or Djokovic announces first that he will play, the other might follow suit “because they’re going neck-and-neck for the history books and they don’t want to give the other one a free Grand Slam.”
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Federer leads with 20 majors, but Nadal is hot on his heels with 19 and Djokovic has 17, including five of the last seven.
“We’ll see,” Sandgren said. “It’s still a month and a half away. Novak should be healthy by then and I don’t know what Rafa’s plans are. We’ll see but I’m excited about the event regardless and I think the U.S. Open is bigger than a couple guys. I think the tournament will be alright regardless.”
The French Open is set to begin two weeks after the U.S. Open (Sept. 27) but Europe now has a travel ban preventing Americans from coming in.
And so while the U.S. Open could be missing a number of key European players, the French Open — where Nadal has won 12 of his 19 majors — could be missing all of the Americans.
“It would be a bummer but the show needs to go on,” Querrey said. “If there’s eight Americans that can’t go over there and play it, they should still play the French Open.
“I’d be bummed to miss it but if that means the other 90 percent of the other top guys in the world can go out and play a Grand Slam, I really would want it to continue on.”
