Top-level tennis could resume in August with back-to-back tournaments in New York

The skeleton of a compressed autumn tour is beginning to come together. Reports from the United States suggest that top-level tennis could resume in August with two tournaments running back-to-back in New York.

The New York Times has floated the idea that the seventh Masters 1000 event of a normal season – the Cincinnati Masters, otherwise known as the Western & Southern Open – could move from its normal base in Ohio to take place at the Billie Jean King Tennis Centre in Flushing Meadows.

With the WSO due to start on August 17, this would allow players a build-up event and then a week of practice before the start of the US Open on August 31. It seems that the US Open’s qualifying event, which would normally occupy that middle week starting August 24, is likely to be canned.

None of this can be inked firmly into the calendar just yet, given not only the fluidity of the medical emergency in New York but also the febrile state of American politics.

But with the United States Tennis Association proposing last weekend to run charter flights to New York for overseas players, most tennis insiders now expect that the professional game will resume behind closed doors in late summer.

Meanwhile, dates are also emerging for a brief and intense clay-court swing after the US Open. The influential Italian website Ubitennis reported this week that the Madrid Open is hoping to run a half-size event between September 14 – the day after the US Open final – and the following Tuesday, September 22.

The idea is that, by spilling into the extra week, players who reached the latter stages of the US Open would be able to start their campaigns in Madrid on the Thursday or even the Friday.

There would be some overlap with the Rome Masters, which would run from Monday September 21 to the following Monday (September 28). And Rome would then, in turn, overlap with the French Open (planned start date: Sunday September 27).

Prize money is expected to be significantly reduced at some – probably all – of these events. But there would still be significant earning opportunities for those players who manage to compete in five of tennis’s biggest tournaments in the space of eight weeks – not to mention an unusually high risk of injury.