Why isn’t this tennis star more open-minded?

Sports fans – not to mention believers in the New York City comeback – got the best news on Tuesday, when the United States Tennis Association announced that the US Open would be played, without fans, at Flushing Meadows starting on August 31.

And unlike Major League Baseball, which has been stuck in difficult negotiations, and the National Football League, which Dr. Anthony Fauci recently warned unlikely to return in the fall, Open’s decision was final and fully supported by Governor Cuomo.

“It will be held without fans, but we can watch it on TV, and I will take it,” Cuomo said. “Tennis authorities will take extraordinary precautions.”

Fantastic! For tired populations whose word “canceled” has become as usual as “good morning,” that is a spectacular change of pace.

But there is one unlucky thing that stands in the way of tennis: tennis players. The sport’s top stars, who have benefited for years, have made sad progress at every step.

Last year’s Wimbledon champion, Simona Halep, said after the announcement of his possibility will not travel to Queens. And Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Nick Kyrgios strongly criticized tennis kicks – which are considered safe by almost every expert – for weeks.

During the negotiations, Djokovic No. 1 the world today calls the US Open plan “extreme” and “unsustainable,” complaining that players must have a smaller group, only three people, and that all competitors must stay in one or two hotels, or rent a nearby house, in Queens.

“We will not have access to Manhattan, we will have to sleep in hotels at the airport, to be tested two or three times per week,” Djokovic whined.

Of course, that also means there are no fancy dinners at Nobu and no relaxed nights at one of Djokovic two Soho condos worth $ 10 million combined. After three months under orders from a shelter-in-place, trapped in a stuffy apartment, New Yorkers do not sympathize with Serbia.

Nadal, last year’s US champion, has expressed more reasonable objections about the safety of New York, one of the hardest hit cities in the world, even though the Big Apple has worked hard to reverse our April peak.

“If you [ask] Today, I will say, “No,” he told the AP in early June. “Within a few months? I do not know. Hopefully, ‘Yes’ … but we need to wait maybe until we have clearer information about how the virus is developing and how the situation is in New York in a few months. “

However, the world number two did not speak of any concerns about playing the French Open, which moved the original May date to just two weeks after the US Open due to a pandemic. Nadal has won in Paris with a record of 12 times, and at the age of 34 is far more likely to win there than to score a fifth US Open victory.

Much more difficult to hear was the Australian firefighter, Kyrgios, who, despite being one of the most brilliant tennis talents, was probably his biggest baby.

“People who live in the US certainly push Open to move forward,” he said on Twitter. “Go Selfish”. I will prepare my hazmat suit when I travel from Australia and then be quarantined for 2 weeks after I return. ”

He called we selfish?

I bet Kyrgios was a selfish person when he retired from the Wimbledon 2017 match with an “injury” just to leave clubbing in London with two women on the same night. Or last May, when he tweeted that the French Open was “really annoying” and then withdrew shortly after quoting “illness.”

Compare all these spoiled millionaires with 22-year-old English footballer Marcus Rashford from Manchester United. The beloved phenom not only returns to the field with his team to please fans around the world, he also uses his platform to help children who are starving during this crisis.

“We have to be the voice of 200,000 children who have no choice but to skip meals today,” Rashford tweeted last week. “I refuse to give up.”

Strong campaign push for policy change – and phone calls – from Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Meanwhile, in New York, with millions of people still unemployed and yearning for improvements, we have rich tennis players who are truly stunned that they are asked to … play tennis.

Two years ago, when athletes were weak against heat at the US Open, former world number one Jimmy Connors tweeted: “To have the opportunity to play 3.5 million I will play at 12 noon in the Sahara.”

Right, Jimmy. Tennis, a sport that is played on six continents, on several surfaces in different climates, is all about adaptation and increasing on that occasion. And the pandemic is the biggest event of all.

Patrick McEnroe of ESPN was right when he said that tennis royalty focused more on greens in their bank accounts than American green hardcourts.

“Don’t obey what Nadal and Djokovic said,” he told Tennis.com, insisting that many players will appear in August. “Those who are rich get richer and their views tilt.”