The 2021 Australian Open could be cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, Tennis Australia chief Craig Tiley said on Wednesday, with fans from abroad unlikely to be able to attend even if it does go ahead.
The tennis season was halted in early March due to the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 3.68 million people around the world and killed over 256,000, according to a Reuters tally.
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This year's Australian Open took place in January as scheduled, but French Open organisers have moved the clay-court major to September while Wimbledon has been cancelled.
The fate of the U.S. Open in New York is expected to be decided next month.
Tennis Australia chief executive Tiley said next year's Australian Open (AO) would not escape the impact of the pandemic.
"Worst-case scenario is no AO," he told the Australian Associated Press.
"Our best-case scenario at this point is having an tournament with players that we can get in here with quarantining techniques and Australian-only fans."
Australia has had less than 7,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Fewer than 1,000 people are still sick, though 96 people have died from the virus.
The country is expected to announce a loosening of social distancing restrictions on Friday with curbs on most businesses removed by July.
The men's ATP Tour and the WTA, which organises the women's circuit, have suspended all tournaments at least until mid-July after countries started locking down borders to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Some players, both past and present, have said they fear the remainder of the 2020 season could be wiped out. Tiley has previously said he expected tennis to lose the remainder of the season to the pandemic.
"There's four scenarios and we've modelled everything," he added. "We've modelled the times we have to make decisions, dates we have to make decisions, who it impacts, how it's going to impact them.
"We've done that for 670 staff. We've done that for all of our partners -- our media partners, our sponsors and for all the governments and places we rent facilities.
"And now we're working on the international playing group and getting them to understand what each of those scenarios are and what it means for them and how we can action it."
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So basically we're screwed. If the Australian Open is in talks about cancelling or pushing back, this means that the other three major tennis tournaments will not be occurring in the year 2020. As much as this makes complete sense, it is just terrible to hear officially. The problem with these international events is that fans are coming from all over the world from every continent to come to one location and than sit in a stadium with tens of thousands of other people who you don't know. From everything we've been told so far, it would be a recipe for disaster. Perhaps these "opens'' as they are called will become closed. This means that they will not be open to any person from any country and instead as a international athlete you will only be allowed to compete in your own country. This is great news for the American Men who have managed to not win a US Open in 17 years making it the longest drought in the history of the US Open which spans all the way back to eighteen hundreds. Perhaps John Isner will finally be able to serve his way to a major title except there will be an asterisk next to his name that's even larger than his 6 foot 10 inch self. It's more than likely that Federer is just chilling in swiss mansion right now with his four kids happy to know that his Major Title Record will most likely stay strong for years to come.
What does this mean for other sports? Well we may never see an Olympics again. The idea of hosting the Olympics in your country used to be one of the coolest things a country could do. Recently its been a burden. Now it seems as if every Olympics has a scandal associated with it and its a large economic investment that never ends up paying off.
Even if International Sports will be no more at least we will always have three of the four PGA Major tournaments in the United States. Go Dinos.
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