Hope floats after wait and anxiety amid pandemic
MUMBAI: “Am I playing tomorrow?” Nick Kyrgios’s tweet post the midnight of February 3 in Melbourne perhaps encapsulates the complex bordering on the chaotic build-up to the season’s first Grand Slam. It came minutes before the organisers cancelled play for a day in six warm-up tournaments last week due to a worker in one of the hotels hosting the participants testing Covid-19 positive.
One positive case, more than 500 players and support staff sent into isolation for 24 hours before being tested, a hectic day’s action paused: Welcome to the 2021 Australian Open, which begins on Monday after months of uncertainty and weeks of delay owing to the pandemic.
Two Grand Slams in New York and Paris have been held in the post-Covid world last year but neither was quite like the Melbourne curtain-raiser for the new season. For starters, they didn’t require 17 charter flights ferrying around 1,200 players, support staff and officials from various destinations into Melbourne. They didn’t require a 14-day quarantine period for all players upon arrival. They didn’t require players to stick to a fivehour daily restriction for training during the period. They didn’t require 72 players to be locked inside their rooms for two weeks due to a handful of passengers testing positive in three flights. Yet, after all those hurdles and last-minute change of plans, players can now look forward to playing some tennis in front of up to 30,000 spectators per day (50% of full capacity) as opposed to a few thousand in Paris and none in New York.
What also makes this Grand Slam the most unpredictable in recent times is the unique build-up to it. Players will head to Melbourne Park after weeks of complete or partial inaction followed by little game time in six warm-up tournaments cramped into seven days. The scheduling has resulted in niggles, injuries and a host of withdrawals from the tune-up events. “You can see that being in a room for two weeks, not playing, it’s not the same as playing a match,” defending champion Sofia Kenin, who dealt with a sore leg in the warm-up event, said. “It’s different but everyone’s going to be ready for Australian Open, for sure.”
Djokovic’s dominance
For sure, Novak Djokovic—the record eight-time Australian Open champion vying for a third straight title—will be ready. Since winning the tournament last year, the 17-time Slam champion has been defaulted from the US Open and swatted aside by Rafael Nadal in the French Open final. But the Djoker almost always means serious business in Melbourne, never mind his tricky draw. The world No. 1 Serb will be equally eager to bring the headlines back to his tennis after being the face of a slew of offcourt controversies. With no Roger Federer and Nadal unsure about his dodgy back holding up as he chases a record 21st Slam title, Djokovic’s biggest challenger is likely to be Dominic Thiem. The newest member of the men’s Major club took Djokovic to the distance in the final last year, and with his Grand Slam final wait broken at the US Open, the 27-year-old Austrian can be all the more threatening.
Top women’s field
The women’s section will see the return of a full-strength field, even if not necessarily a fully fit one. World No. 1 and local hope Ashleigh Barty is making a comeback post a year, so is Canadian 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu.
The last six Grand Slams have each had a different women’s champion—Barty, Simona Halep, Andreescu, Kenin, Naomi Osaka and latest entrant Iga Swiatek of Poland—but none bearing the name of Serena Williams. The 39-year-old has had to witness the young brigade blossom while continuing her pursuit of a record-equalling 24th singles Slam title. The American will have to get past at least some of these champions to end the wait.
Raina’s Slam debut
After almost three years and nine qualifying attempts at entering a Slam, India’s Ankita Raina will finally realise her dream of playing a Grand Slam match as she made the women’s doubles draw with Romania’s Mihaela Buzarnescu on Sunday.
Raina, ranked 119th in doubles, has been in Melbourne as one of the alternate players from the singles qualifiers and signed up to play with the 32-year-old Buzarnescu—a former top-20 singles player—a day before deadline. “Sometimes I feel things happen exactly when they are meant to,” Raina, who will be the fifth Indian woman to feature in a Slam main draw in the Open era and the first since Sania Mirza, said from Melbourne. “Finally my time to be part of a Grand Slam has come, and I’m very excited.”