Aussie Open players out of quarantine at last
MELBOURNE • The world’s top tennis stars yesterday began emerging from a gruelling fortnight stuck in their hotel rooms and raced to get match-fit before their coronavirus-disrupted season resumes in Melbourne.
Australian Open players were given the green light to start exiting Covid-19 quarantine yesterday, with the first group among the 960 players, coaches and officials isolating at three Melbourne hotels leaving at 6pm local time. The rest are expected to depart by Sunday, Victoria state health officials said.
Players isolating in Adelaide, including Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams, were also to be released ahead of an exhibition tournament there today. They have enjoyed the five-hour daily blocks of training while staying in reportedly bigger rooms, leading to mutterings about preferential treatment.
Spanish great Rafael Nadal will start his season in South Australia with a two-set clash against world No. 3 Dominic Thiem, while top-ranked Djokovic meets Italian Jannik Sinner. Williams faces Naomi Osaka while world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty takes on Simona Halep.
They then head to Melbourne, with Djokovic, Nadal, and Thiem playing in the ATP Cup from Tuesday. Barty, Williams, Halep and Osaka headline the WTA Gippsland Trophy and Yarra Valley Classic, starting Sunday. A third event, the Grampians Trophy, begins on Wednesday for players in hard lockdown who have not been able to train at all, including former Australian Open champions Victoria Azarenka and Angelique Kerber.
In total, a bumper six ATP and WTA tournaments await players beginning on Sunday, all at Melbourne Park and squeezed into a week to make up for lost time in the lead up to the season-opening Grand Slam on Feb 8.
Halep is looking forward to facing Barty.
“I can’t wait for that because it means I will be out of quarantine,” the world No. 2 told Romanian website Stiripesurse. “For two weeks I’ve only seen my team… To have an official match after practising only with one player (fellow Romanian Irina Begu) for two weeks is going to be interesting for everybody. But I also expect good times because here we are free to do everything.”
Players will be free to move around the cities and surrounding regions so long as they abide by local social distancing restrictions.
Some players, however, have been made to wait for their freedom and expressed confusion over their scheduled departure.
American Tennys Sandgren, who was among the 72 players put into a stricter quarantine in Melbourne after passengers on their flights to Australia tested positive, was unhappy he would not be able to check out of isolation until today.
“I just found out we’re not going to be able to leave the room until midnight tomorrow which will put us out close to 15 days in this room,” he said in a video posted on Instagram yesterday.
“That’s also another day we can’t practise.”
World No. 63 Oksana Kalashnikova was also puzzled. She posted a meme on Twitter saying, “Why??” and wrote: “When Australian Government orders u to stay another extra day just because.”
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS