English newspaper ‘Daily Telegraph’ revealed some details of the tournament this Saturday: it will run for four days and will feature some familiar faces, as is the case with Dustin Brown, one of the main drivers behind the initiative.
According to the same news source, this will only be the first in a series of events on German territory during the near future. The matches will be broadcast on the Tennis Channel and the streaming of results of the tournament to the betting market which will be in charge of Sportradar. All of this with the approval of the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU). Crucially, the organizers have earned the approval of the Tennis Integrity Unit, who agree that the necessary safeguards against match-fixing are in place.
The report said players at the Tennis Point Exhibition Series will have to wear masks when not in action and there will only be three people on court - two competitors and a chair umpire - during a match. The event will be an eight-man field contesting a total of 32 matches over four days on indoor clay at the Base Tennis Academy near the small town of Hoehr-Grenzhausen.
None of the players set to be involved are currently ranked in the top 100 and include singles world number 143 Yannick Hanfmann and Dustin Brown, ranked 23 as well as Choinski, a 22-year-old Challenger player who switched allegiance from Germany to Great Britain at the end of 2018 through his mother, who hails from Southampton.
Serena Williams' coach Patrick Mouratoglou said on Saturday that his tennis academy in south of France will host a five-week tournament starting in May that will give players the chance to get back on court during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is a first glimpse of what might become the norm over the rest of the 2020 season. Travel restrictions have limited the event to local players, so there are no members of the top 100, even if Brown – who is best known for beating Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon in 2015 – has previously stood as high as number 64.
Source: GMB
