Next year’s Adelaide International tennis event has been thrown into doubt after Tennis Australia confirmed it was considering shifting its entire summer program to Melbourne.
Key points:
- Tennis Australia is looking at hosting all matches in Victoria if there is an outbreak interstate
- The Adelaide International could be cancelled in its second year
- SA has recorded five new coronavirus cases
The uncertainty comes after two other large Adelaide sporting events — the Adelaide 500 Supercars season opener and next year’s Tour Down Under cycling race — were cancelled over the past week.
But Tennis SA and the State Government said they were still preparing to host the WTA and ATP women’s and men’s events at Memorial Drive.
Tennis Australia has proposed bubbles in various cities to allow international players to train and play ahead of local tournaments and January’s Australian Open, but the plans need approval from state governments.
Along with the Adelaide International and the Hobart International, the ATP Cup is scheduled for Brisbane, Sydney and Perth.
But to ensure players do not get stuck interstate if there is a coronavirus outbreak outside of Victoria, Tennis Australia is considering moving all tournaments to Melbourne, and has until next week to make a decision.
The new Adelaide International event was first run at a new look Memorial Drive in January, replacing the Sydney International.
Adelaide International tournament director Alistair MacDonald said moving all tennis tournaments to Melbourne was one of “six or seven scenarios on the cards” to ensure players could make it to the Australian Open.
“Looking at all these scenarios is the right thing to do, but we haven’t made a decision on any of these, albeit we are getting closer to where we have to make a decision,” Mr MacDonald said.
He said the tournament had a “really great first year” and organisers were “keen as mustard to run a second one”.
“We’re doing everything we can to do that — we’re working with [the South Australian] Government, we’re working with SA Health,” he said.
“Let’s hope, collectively, we can ensure players can get to Melbourne to play the Australia Open because we want them to get to Melbourne.”
Contract is ‘locked-in’
South Australian Treasurer Rob Lucas said his Government had signed onto a “locked-in contract” to deliver the event and that SA Health was working on plans for it to go ahead safely.
He said the contract was signed as part of the Memorial Drive redevelopment, on which taxpayers spent $10 million and Tennis Australia chipped in $1 million.
“We made a significant investment a year or so ago in Memorial Drive [and] as part of that deal was a locked-in contract for a period of time for the Adelaide International tournament,” Mr Lucas said.
“It would only be if we couldn’t deliver on our particular contractual arrangements in South Australia that anyone could seek to take it.
Labor’s Tom Koutsantonis said while out of the Government’s hands, any decision to cancel next year’s tournament would compound the loss of the Supercars race.
“If you rely on international events in the time of a global pandemic, surely … domestic events are more important than they ever have been,” he said.
Tickets for the Australian Open go on sale this month with plans to accommodate crowds at 25 per cent capacity.
Five new cases in South Australia
South Australia today reported five new coronavirus cases — all of them international travellers in hotel quarantine — while Victoria reported none for the sixth day in a row.
SA Health said today’s cases included a teenager, a man in his 20s and another in his 40s, and two women in their 30s.
There are now 16 active cases in South Australia and 20 in Victoria.
