The Australian Open in 2021 has been postponed until early February more than 70 tennis players and staff was forced into an unexpected and strict quarantine period of two weeks.
The protocol was implemented after positive COVID-19 cases were discovered on three of 17 charter flights to the country. Australia, one of the few countries that has the coronavirus pandemic under control, usually requires all travelers entering the country to be quarantined in a hotel for 14 days before being allowed anywhere else in the country.
It is a strict routine supported by the Australian people and COVID business is kept to a minimum in the country as it gets out of control elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, for many tennis players, this would mean that they would have to be kept indoors for a long time without being prepared. Superstars like Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka may have had some room to maneuver, but they were able to practice for hours at a time from their rooms.
The whole situation is a mess and while most tennis players handle it well, some brought their complaints to social media, complaining about the food, the boredom and uh, the inability to get a hairstylist.
World no. 13 Roberto Bautista Agut compares to the fact that he is confined to prison in his beautiful hotel room in Melbourne.
“It’s the same, it’s the same, but with Wi-Fi,” he said during an interview. ‘These people have no idea of tennis, of training courts, and of nothing. It is therefore a complete disaster, due to the control of everything. ”
Others went on social media without saying anything nice about the meals they were served.
Player Yulia Putintseva had at least one unexpected companion to share her time with.
If we have one obvious villain in the story, it’s Bernard Tomic’s quarantine partner, Vanessa Sierra, who talked at length about the difficulty of having only one bathroom and not having access to a hairstylist, because she was never her own hair.
According to ESPN, the world no. 1, Novak Djokovic, wrote a list of ‘demands’ to Tennis Australia officials and asked that players move to ‘private homes with tennis courts’.
There were also violations of quarantine of players.
The extended quarantine measures have been commissioned by the Australian Government, which is merely applying lengthy rules. Doubles player Artem Sitak said Tennis Australia did warn them about this very scenario.
As for the way Australians view the players, it’s not just sympathetic.
It is therefore clear that tennis players are treated like every other person entering the country, and this is something they are not happy with. It’s absolutely ugly that players have to be in a short quarantine for so long, but the real issue here is why the Australian Open is taking place anyway. The world is still fighting a global pandemic, and all that is needed is for the disease to get out of control. The government puts the health of the country at the forefront, and rightly so does not care about tennis pros who took a gamble during a pandemic. Two weeks caught up can be devastating for the mind and body, but it was a risk that all the players were knowingly good.
All of this is a reminder that sport is a privilege and that tennis players do not seem to get stuck in hotel rooms.