Stosur hits back at Court remarks
Grand slam champion Samantha Stosur has hinted that tennis stars may try to boycott Margaret Court Arena at next year’s Australian Open.
Stosur is passionately backing fellow Australian Casey Dellacqua in her stance against Margaret Court after the legendary 24-times major winner created a firestorm with her public opposition to same-sex marriage.
Even the Australian Prime Minister was dragged into the debate after calls to have Court’s name removed from one of Melbourne Park’s show courts.
Dellacqua - who has two children in an openly gay relationship with former touch football champion Amanda Judd - has received almost 8000 retweets of her post: ‘‘Margaret. Enough is Enough.’’
Stosur was among those to retweet the post and solidify her support for her Dellacqua. Stosur said she doubted Court’s name would be removed from Melbourne Park but conceded there was plenty of debate among players around a willingness to play on the court.
‘‘Yeah. It’s been pretty fiery. Look, I think everyone can have their own opinion,’’ Stosur told the Herald Sun.
‘‘I don’t agree with Margaret’s opinion. And look, it’s just not something that I agree with. I think we definitely should have it [same sex marriages] in Australia.
‘‘So like I said, I think everyone can have their opinion. I don’t agree with it, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we all get down to the Australian Open next year and who wants to play on Margaret Court Arena and who doesn’t and we’ll go from there,’’ Stosur said.
Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic opened his defence of the French Open yesterday by beating Marcel Granollers 6-3 6-4 6-2 as new coaching consultant Andre Agassi sat generally expressionless in the stands.
‘‘It’s hard to say whether there is significant difference on the court, because it’s only a few days that we are together,’’ Djokovic said of his partnership with Agassi. ‘‘So it’s going to take a little bit of time.’’
On a relatively quiet day 2, Rafael Nadal started his pursuit of a record 10th title with a 6-1 6-4 6-1 victory over Benoit Paire. Other seeded men advancing included No 5 Milos Raonic, No 7 Marin Cilic and No 10 David Goffin, while No 14 Jack Sock, the top-ranked US man, and No 31 Gilles Simon - both in Nadal’s section of the draw plus No 32 Mischa Zverev all lost.
Defending women’s champion Garbine Muguruza and former No 1 Caroline Wozniacki won, but two seeded American women joined Sock on the way out - Coco Vandeweghe and Lauren Davis.