Elina Svitolina is making plans to skip the US Open and begin her 2020 season on the European clay.
The current World No.5 stands to benefit from the new WTA rankings rules, which will allow a player to keep their ranking points from the 2019 US Open if they skip it in 2020. The Ukrainian reached the semi-finals last year.
“Given the situation today, I think I will start in Madrid and not play in the US Open,” Svitolina said in Berlin over the weekend. “I think so at the moment, but so far this is not a 100% final decision. There is another factor—it's health, it is, of course, also important. So, given the rules of the WTA, I will be able to earn points only if I perform better at the US Open than last season. A year ago I reached the semifinals and to repeat such a result or to surpass it is quite difficult (laughs). I think that at the moment it will be more important for me to train on the ground. We still do not know what will happen next, the situation changes every week.”
Svitolina joins a growing list of players that are on the fence with regard to the playing the US Open. With the EU extending its travel ban on US citizens, a big fear for players is that they will be forced to quarantine for two weeks before being allowed back on European soil.
Rumors are circulating that the travel ban has the Citi Open (scheduled for August 13) close to cancelling. New doubts are emerging about the status of the Western and Southern Open and the US Open as well.
With the Coronavirus pandemic raging in the US, Brazil, India and Russia Europe is hoping to avoid the same fate by locking down. The United States is rapidly approaching 4,000,000 confirmed cases, and Brazil recently flew threw 2,000,000. India had over 40,000 cases in a single day for the first time ever on Monday.