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.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to