Article
13 Aug 2020
ITF World Tennis Tour returns after five-month hiatus
13 Aug 2020
The ITF World Tennis Tour is set to return next week after a five-month hiatus as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, with two European tournaments scheduled to take place.
Professional tennis joins a number of other sports that have already begun their return to competitive play amidst a backdrop of strict health and safety protocols, with a men’s event, M25 Vogau, and a women’s event, W15 Oeiras, due to begin on 17 August.
Holger Rune, winner of the boys’ singles at Roland Garros last year, will utilise the junior exempt place he earned into World Tennis Tour events and joins a strong field of players (all otherwise ranked inside the Top 450) in the main draw entry list in Vogau, Austria.
The world No. 827, a regular blogger for ITFTennis.com, will be looking to pick up from where he left off prior to the suspension of the Tour in March, when he matched his best-run at a professional tournament by reaching the quarter-final at M15 Porec before the tournament was abandoned.
In fact, the 17-year-old was on a four-match winning streak at the time, having won two matches during Denmark’s 5-0 win over Puerto Rico in their Davis Cup World Group II play-off the previous week.
M25 Vogau, won by Czech teenager Jonas Forejtek last year, is destined for a new champion next week, with none of the tournament’s eight previous winners returning to bid for a repeat triumph.
Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo, the world No. 244, leads the entry list for the tournament, with the 22-year-old hoping to win his second title of 2020, having collected his eighth on the ITF World Tennis Tour at M25 Los Angeles at the turn of the year.
The lone Austrian in the main draw entry list, Lucas Miedler, will be hoping for an upturn in fortunes and a strong run on home soil, having posted a 1-6 win-loss record so far in 2020.
The sole women’s event on the ITF World Tennis Tour next week sees a strong field featuring six top 300 players at W15 Oeiras in Portugal, with a number of emerging talents set to be on show.
Denmark’s Clara Tauson, 17, and French pair Diane Parry, 17, and Clara Burel, 19, have all held the junior world No. 1 ranking in recent years, and will look to continue their transition towards the upper echelons of the women’s game with a strong showing at the clay court tournament.
While Parry is gunning for her first professional title, she will be buoyed by memories of her semi-final run at W25 Las Vegas on her last professional outing in March. Tauson won her sixth professional title at W25 Glasgow in February, while Burel collected her first title on the ITF World Tennis Tour a week earlier at W25 Grenoble.
Spanish world No. 176 Cristina Bucsa, 22, will lead the field as top seed in Oeiras, with the 22-year-old eyeing a fifth professional singles title and first since she won W60 Nantes in November.