Why the Winston-Salem Open won’t happen in August, as tennis tour shifts schedule
The Winston-Salem Open — normally the last stop on the ATP tour before the U.S. Open — is canceled this summer as pro tennis remakes its schedule in response to the pandemic.
The tournament was scheduled for Aug. 22-29. It will resume at Wake Forest’s tennis complex in August 2021, according to a statement released Wednesday.
The USTA announced this week a plan to hold the U.S. Open, without fans in attendance, in New York City in late August, after NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved the plan. The men’s and women’s tours will run a tournament at the US Tennis Center in New York the week before the start of the Open, rather than hold separate events in other cities.
“We are fully supportive of the decision to hold back-to-back events in New York and are proud to be part of the structure that will allow the New York tournaments to take place,” Winston-Salem Open tournament director Jeff Ryan said. “While this is disappointing, we want our community and supporters to know that our decision has positively impacted the single most important tennis event in the U.S.”
Winston-Salem started hosting the hardcourt event in 2011 at a tennis complex built near BB&T Field, Wake Forest’s football stadium. It is the only tour-level tennis event in North Carolina, evolving from Davis Cup matches that were held at Lawrence-Joel Coliseum.
The tournament got a boost from highly ranked American John Isner, a Greensboro native who frequently came home to play the event. One of the tour’s hardest servers, Isner won the Winston-Salem Open in 2011 and 2012.
