By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Tuesday April 7, 2020

Though seriously impacted by the Aussie bush fire crisis, the Australian Open was the fortunate major that was able to finish up its 2020 staging before the Coronavirus Pandemic hit high gear. But as the crisis lingers and threatens to take out the rest of the 2020 tennis season, the Australian Open is already making contingencies for 2021 in the likely event that the world is still not free of the spread of the pandemic that has already claimed 80,000 lives and stopped the global economy in its tracks.



“We have to be prepared for a changed environment,” Tennis Australia CEO Tiley said in a statement on Tuesday. “We obviously hope that as a community, we are through COVID-19 as quickly and safely as is possible. But we don’t know which of the current measures being used to try and contain the spread of infection will still need to be in place for the medium to long term.”

Tiley says that the Australian Open is taking into account multiple scenarios, as it is impossible to tell how the tournament will be impacted next year without more information on the rate of abatement of the virus’ spread globally, as well as government travel restrictions.

Playing the event with no spectators, something that has been met with theoretical resistance thus far, is apparently on the table.

“For example, with such a high-dependency on international travel we are looking at what we might have to do if players need to be quarantined for any length of time before being allowed to freely move around Australia,” Tiley said. “Another example is if mass gatherings are still not allowed or severely restricted next year, we are looking at the possibility of running an event for broadcast. These are just two of many scenarios we have to examine."

Australia currently has under 6,000 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, and less than 50 deaths.

But the global numbers continue to rise rapidly. One month ago, on march 8, only China had more than 7,500 confirmed cases of the virus. Today there are five countries with over 100,000 confirmed cases and 17 with over 10,000 cases.