Opelka wins, Hurkacz greets the invisible crowd - tennis is back
The first attempts at professional tennis have now been made in the United States: Four top 100 players have been competing in an invitation tournament in Palm Beach, Florida since Friday.
by tennisnet.com
last edit: May 09, 2020, 07:21 am
The organizers could still work on the angle of incidence of the camera, otherwise it looked like professional tennis again, which Reilly Opelka, Hubert Hurkacz, Tommy Paul and Miomir Kecmanovic showed on Friday in Palm Beach in the US state of Florida. Almost exclusively, however, to the viewers of the tennis channel. Because, of course, there are still strict regulations in the USA when it comes to the absence of fans.
Hubert Hurkacz, who has already beaten Dominic Thiem at the ATP Cup in Sydney this year, did not care, the Pole said goodbye to his imaginary crowd after his success against Tommy Paul (conqueror of Grigor Dimitrov at the Australian Open).
Thiem, Struff also in use soon
The game is played in Palm Beach in the best-of-three format, but with sets of four - as fans know from the NextGen Masters in Milan. This form of play theoretically benefits the very good servers, Opelka proved this in practice with two victories against Kecmanovic and Paul. The fun will come to an end already today, further events of this kind will follow in the coming weeks.
As is well known, the respective organizers in German-speaking countries allowed themselves a little more time, apart from the first attempts with Dustin Brown and Yannick Hanfmann last weekend: The Generali Austrian Pro Series starts with Dominic Thiem and Dennis Novak on May 25th, in Germany it goes continue with the series organized by the DTB at the beginning of June - with the top players Jan-Lennard Struff and Laura Siegemund.