Open on time for business

TENNIS Australia is adamant the Australian Open will start on Monday despite the tournament being thrown into COVID-19 chaos.

TA boss Craig Tiley said he was “absolutely confident” the latest COVID-19 scare with a hotel quarantine worker testing positive wouldn’t shut down the grand slam tournament.

He said warm-up matches would resume on Friday pending the completion of testing of the 160 players who were staying at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

“We are absolutely confident that the Australian Open is going to go ahead,” Tiley said.

“The probability is very low that there is going to be any issue, we fully expect them all to test negative and we continue with play tomorrow as originally planned.

“They are considered casual contacts and we have been advised that there is a really low probability that any of them would test positive.”

Play was abandoned on Thursday with 507 players, officials and staff who were linked to the hotel told to iso

late and get tested. Tiley said the prospect of rain on Friday could potentially cause further problems but there were 11 indoor courts that could be utilised at Melbourne Park.

He said shortened matches across the six warm-up tournaments was an option that would be discussed.

“As far as tennis goes we are planning to continue with matches tomorrow,” he said.

“We have three days to fit this all in, we have many options including formats on scoring and the number of courts we can use but we’ll work closely with the WTA

and ATP to get a schedule out by 6pm.”

World No.1 Ash Barty had been scheduled to play at 11am while Nick Kyrgios was also set to play his third-round match this afternoon.

Tennis Australia coach and former player Peter Luczak, Matt Ebden and Blake Mott were the only Australians who stayed at the Grand Hyatt.

Stefanos Tsitsipas, Stan Wawrinka, and Bethanie Mattek-Sands were among the players to have stayed at the hotel during their quarantine.

Commentator Jim Courier also stayed at the hotel.