After the ATP announced on 12 March that all tennis events would be suspended for at least six weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Novak Djokovic proposed an exhibition tournament in his home region of the Balkans from 13 June to 5 July. The schedule and locations proposed were:
Unusually for events during the pandemic, fans were allowed to attend, but organizers said that a one-meter distance between each spectator would be enforced. This was not the case during the Serbian leg, however, which was tightly packed.
Format
The matches proposed were a shorter version of tennis called Fast4 Tennis where the first player to win 4 games wins the set, with 2 sets winning the match. Each stop on the tour followed a round-robin system between players in two pools, with the pool winners playing in a final.
Participants
The following is a list of players for the tournament: The singles competitors secured for the event were top players, compared to other unofficial tournaments around the same time.
Finals
In the Belgrade tournament, Dominic Thiem defeated surprise finalist Filip Krajinović in three sets in the first leg. The cancelled final of the second leg was to be Novak Djokovic against Andrey Rublev.
Aftermath
It was revealed on 21 June that Grigor Dimitrov tested positive for COVID-19 after participating in the Zadar event and then returning to his home in Monaco. The announcement by Dimitrov on Instagram took place shortly before the final was to be played in Zadar, with the crowd awaiting the players to enter the court. After Dimitrov's announcement, the final was cancelled. Social media posts and photographs of the players showed them hugging, shaking hands, playing basketball, and dancing together during the event, as well as during the previous event a week and a half earlier in Belgrade. Borna Ćorić, who played against Dimitrov at the Zadar event and was seen to hug Dimitrov before the game, also revealed on 22 June that he tested positive for COVID-19. Viktor Troicki and his pregnant wife Aleksandra announced they had tested positive hours later. On 23 June, Djokovic announced that both he and his wife Jelena had also tested positive for COVID-19. On 26 June, Djokovic's coach Goran Ivanišević confirmed that he tested positive for the virus as well.
