For safety reasons, only single and double competitions for women and men and wheelchair tennis competitions will be held in 2020. The number of participants in the doubles competitions will also be halved from 64 to 32 doubles pairings. Both the mixed competition and all junior competitions are canceled. In addition, qualification competitions will not be held. The tournament is played without spectators on site.
For the initially announced cancellation of the wheelchair tennis competitions, the tournament organizing United States Tennis Association was sharply criticized by the leader of the men's wheelchair tennis world rankings, Dylan Alcott . He described the USTA's dealings with the players as "discriminatory" because they were relieved of the self-determined decision to participate. Other players joined the criticism. The USTA then reversed the decision and admitted communication errors.
Cancel
Numerous players, some of them from the top of the world rankings, canceled their participation due to safety concerns, above all the respective defending champions Rafael Nadal and Bianca Andreescu as well as the world number leader in the women's list, Ashleigh Barty . Further refusals with this reason were given by Nick Kyrgios, among others . With Simona Halep , Elina Switolina , Kiki Bertens and Belinda Bencic, further top ten players canceled the women . Even Julia Goerges and Andrea Petkovic step out of security concerns not at the tournament.
One day before the start of the tournament, Benoît Paire tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, whereupon he had to withdraw his participation.