‘Social distance ambassadors’ to monitor players at US Open
Forty “social distance ambassadors” will monitor the U.S. Open grounds to make sure players and others are avoiding close contact and wearing face coverings — the U.S. Tennis Association bought 500,000 masks to distribute — as part of efforts to avoid a coronavirus outbreak during the fan-free Grand Slam tournament.
“We’re trying to leave nothing to chance,” Billie Jean King National Tennis Center chief operating officer Danny Zausner said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, “and make it as stress-free for the players as possible.”
The USTA announced Tuesday that one person, who is not a player, turned up positive for COVID-19 out of 1,400 tests administered in the controlled environment set up for the U.S. Open and another tennis tournament preceding it at the same site in New York.
The Western & Southern Open, moved this year from Cincinnati because of the pandemic, began Saturday. The U.S. Open starts Aug. 31.
Two tests are taken 48 hours apart when a player or member of an entourage arrives at one of the two official hotels or one of the private homes the USTA made available for rent on Long Island. (Eight players chose the private housing option.)
The person, who is asymptomatic, came up positive on the second test and will be isolated for 10 days. Contact tracing will attempt to determine who might have been exposed.
Among the elements of the USTA’s plan, described to the AP by Zausner:
1 Similar to the on-site ambassadors, who will be split into two shifts of 20, monitors at the hotels will make sure people don’t leave their rooms for 24 hours after an initial COVID-19 test. “If they come down for whatever reason — because they’re young — a security person is there to say, ‘Excuse me. You need to be upstairs,’ and send them back up to their room,” Zausner said.
1 Instead of individual cars ferrying players and others between the hotels and tournament site, about 60 buses will be used, filled to 50% capacity. One person will sit by each window and the adjacent seat will remain empty.
1 Every room on the 40acre USTA campus was measured and had its air flow analyzed. Some rooms were shuttered, others outfitted with filtration systems to rotate air and “meet hospital criteria,” according to Zausner.
1 Arthur Ashe Stadium locker rooms that normally hold up to 300 people are limited to 30 at a time — and only players, not coaches or other entourage members.
1 Most training and massage tables were moved from locker rooms to outdoors, such as under the viewing gallery for practice courts.