How Will Professional Tennis Look Different After It Returns From the Coronavirus Pandemic?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

ROBIN LUNDBERG: Plenty of questions for every sport, and that goes for tennis as well. For more, I'm joined by our senior writer, Jon Wertheim. Jon, what's in your mailbag?

JON WERTHEIM: No matches going on, but still a lot of curious tennis fans. So we have a variety of topics. But one thing we talk about:Can any good come out of this delay that nobody is happy about? But we came up with one thing, which is the day of ball kids handling the sweaty, snot-infused towels of players is probably no longer. And I think what we're seeing is that we're really re-examining all sports and figuring out what is necessary, what isn't necessary, what's going to change, and what absolutely has to stay.

And when we talk about tennis, you know, do you need ball kids? Can players maybe pick up their own balls? Well, probably.

But the one thing that we all can agree, the days of handling towels are no longer going to happen. The other thing that's interesting is do we need the post-match handshake. Which is always just nice gesture of these players have been locked in combat. They've been on opposite sides of the net. And then suddenly the match ends. The very first person they touch is the opponent. They have this moment at the net. Do we still shake hands after coronavirus? And then there are larger issues as well. I mean, maybe we need to have regional tours so players spend less time on airplanes. I mean, again, I think tennis in a lot of ways as a right is a microcosm for a global business that right now is reassessing everything top down about how it's run.

And I suspect this sport will look a little bit different when it comes back. Like all sectors will.