The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of the 2020 Wimbledon Championship tennis tournament, officially making the novel coronavirus as bad as Hitler.
On Wednesday, the All England Club (AELTC) announced that it was officially cancelling this year’s Wimbledon event “due to public health concerns linked to the coronavirus epidemic.” The 134th Wimbledon will instead be staged from June 28 to July 11, 2021.
The original plan was to postpone the event until later this summer but the UK government’s increasingly dire forecasts and Tuesday’s one-day death toll of 563 quashed those ideas. AELTC chairman Ian Hewitt noted that it usually took a World War to result in Wimbledon’s cancellation, so Britons will likely find some way to blame this on Boris Becker or Steffi Graf.
Wimbledon’s absence will leave yet another giant hole on bookmakers’ calendar, and more holes may appear if other Grand Slam events such as the French Open (currently delayed to September) and the US Open (holding firm for the moment for late August) follow Wimbledon’s lead.
On Thursday, AELTC CEO Richard Lewis said he “still hopes that the American hardcourt season will take place” but added that it wouldn’t be “unrealistic to say that there may be no more tennis this year.”
PATRICK KEANE SPANKED FOR TENNIS BETS
Meanwhile, Thursday saw the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) suspend and fine UK player Patrick Keane for wagering on tennis. The TIU, which represents the sport’s seven largest stakeholders, launched a probe that determined Keane had four different betting accounts from which he placed six tennis wagers in August and September 2019.
Tennis pros are prohibited from wagering on their sport or even promoting bookmakers, as Colombian doubles player Robert Farah discovered in 2018. Farah, who ranked 16th in the world at the time, was suspended for three months and fined US$5k for promoting Colombian-licensed sportsbook BetPlay on social media.
Keane wasn’t a ranked player and hasn’t played a pro event since May 2018. The TIU suspended him for six months and fined him $5k, although three months and $4,500 will be forgiven if he manages to commit no more fouls under the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program, which should be easy, what with the utter lack of tennis going on.
