The stadium announcer at the Internazionali Femminili di Palermo on Monday wished a warm and welcome return to tennis lovers as the WTA tournament in Italy started five months after the past one, with bottles of hand sanitizer attached to the nets.
The event comes just weeks before the US Open and Roland Garros double-header, but lost original top seed Simona Halep to lingering health concerns, while an unnamed player withdrew from qualifying after testing positive for COVID-19.
There were about 350 fans allowed into a venue built for 1,500.
Photo: AP
Sofia Kenin and Elina Svitolina captured titles on March 8, the last day of competitive matches before the circuit was put on hold as the tennis calendar was shaken upside down.
The prestigious Indian Wells event in the California desert became the first competition to be axed due to the pandemic.
The French Open was then moved to late September, with Wimbledon canceled for the first time since World War II.
When Croatia’s Donna Vekic and the Netherlands’ Arantxa Rus took to the clay court late on Monday, about 150 days after the sport’s hiatus started, they were not wearing face masks.
After Vekic won, she told reporters via videoconferencing that she was happy to have remembered how to play tennis.
“It’s weird, sometimes funny with all the protocols — masks on your face, visors and screens in the transport,” she said. “Of course it’s necessary, but so different from before — it seems unreal.”
The line judges and umpire were masked, and the players had to stand behind a social distancing line to approach them.
The stands are cleared and disinfected after each match.
Players in the second meeting were told to wear their masks during the rest periods and to sanitize their hands from the dispensing bottles attached to the net poles.
There were hand gel bottles placed in the passages between the seats and at the entrances.
Hand shaking or hugging after the matches is forbidden, with players instead tapping rackets over the net from a safe distance.
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