The WTA Pan Pacific Open in Japan, one in all Asia’s prime ladies’s tennis tournaments, has been scrapped for the primary time due to the coronavirus, organisers mentioned Tuesday. The cancellation of the occasion, which was scheduled for November and was received 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 event since 1984 and leaves Asia with just one Girls’s Tennis Affiliation occasion, October’s Korea Open, on this 12 months’s coronavirus-wrecked schedule.
Additionally it is one other blow for sport in Japan after the Tokyo Olympics, initially on account of begin final week, had been postponed for a 12 months over COVID-19.
“We had been looking for methods (to carry the Pan Pacific Open), akin to having no viewers or limiting the variety of spectators,” organisers mentioned in a press release.
“However we reached the robust conclusion that we have now to cancel the event given the issue of making certain the protection” of all concerned, they added.
The event had already been postponed from September to November, with organisers hoping the delay would permit them to carry the occasion.
Final 12 months’s Pan Pacific Open drew outsize consideration in Japan due to hometown hero Osaka, who grew to become the primary Japanese participant to win the event 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 just the newest sports activities occasion to fall by the wayside because the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.
Final 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 mentioned it could not stage most worldwide sports activities occasions for the remainder of 2020, in a bid to maintain the pandemic in verify.
The worldwide 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.
Promoted
Organisers of the Korea Open, Asia’s final remaining event on this 12 months’s WTA calendar, advised AFP they had been “monitoring the scenario” however had not made any resolution to cancel.
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