Diego Schwartzman: We have to think it will be a shorter season and adapt

Argentina's Diego Schwartzman says he will be working on training and his equipment during the six week suspension of all tennis tournaments, in an interview to La Nacion.

The Argentine, who had to retire during his last event at the Argentina Open, says, 'We are looking at what to do with my equipment. I guess so: we will pretend that the year has not started and we will prepare a preseason of three or four weeks. We have to think that it will be a year a little shorter than normal and we have to adapt.'

Schwartzman says that he took the regular health precautions when he traveled to Indian Wells, where he found out that the tournament was canceled, "I have been traveling and flying for many years, so when I left here, from Argentina, to the United States, as always I had my alcohol gel and tried to wash my hands very often. I take great care of myself on each trip because every Monday, due to my profession, I have to be 100 percent. I always took care of myself, so I took the usual precautions. Not much more than that. I was not afraid. I didn't like it (the way the tournamnest were canceled) mostly because I landed in Los Angeles on Sunday and found out that it had been canceled by messages from Facundo Lugones [Argentine coach of Briton Cameron Norrie] and Fede Coria, who were there in the tournament. I even looked if it wasn't April Fool's Day, I thought they were playing a joke on me, but then I saw an email that was only in English, it wasn't in a couple of languages ​​as it should have been and the title was very calm, something like that such as 'ATP notification'. Many times these emails have not so relevant information or you open them the next day after receiving them. That was the way of communication that such a tournament was suspended. That was what angered him, because the decision to cancel it was the wisest. The next day, the healthiest thing, was to cancel Miami. I understand that they took a few days, they also waited for the opinions of the players, the governments and everything that was happening, but the wisest thing was done. Total suspension is fine, because there are a lot of athletes who are with the virus and would infect others and the virus would multiply."

The Argentine added that he thinks the ranking system should be frozen until further notice or be averages but he acknowledged that this was a difficult decision. 

Finally, Schwartzman also said that one of his friends Paulo Dybala, the Juventus footballer, has been isolated in Turin because Daniele Rugani, a teammate of his, tested positive for coronavirus. "I spoke very little. I know what everyone knows. That they are in quarantine, in Italy. A colleague of his was positive and I think that the weekend they did studies to the entire campus, but they were all perfect."

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/3aUS9N3