Where there’s smoke, there’s ire

Where there’s smoke, there’s . . . well, it’s a bit hard to say with all this haze around, but until the murk clears up a bit, we’ll just play it as we see it, if indeed we can see anything through all this . . . smoke. So (cough) carry on.

This is an approximation of the bumbling way Australia’s tennis establishment is trying to come to grips with the unprecedented problem of a pall of bushfire smog hanging over the preliminaries to its showpiece tournament.

Rain? One drop and off you go. Rain makes it dangerous to be on court. Extreme heat? We’ve got dry bulbs coming out our rafters. But smoke? Let’s see. Melbourne Park is a smokefree etc. Except now, for the second day in a row, it wasn’t.

At Federation Square at Wednesday’s beginning, beneath the barely discernible skyscrapers of the CBD, Todd Woodbridge interviewed Rafael Nadal and Tennis Australia chief Craig Tiley. There was smoke everywhere, but not on the list of questions. Why, it was not clear.

Meantime, on breakfast television, a presenter worried about what the image of a coughing, spluttering Maria Sharapova on CNN would do for Melbourne’s reputation. Can it really be, after all these years, that we worry only about being patted on the head by America and told we are good boys?

She also worried about how harmful postponement or cancellation would be to our international standing. Later in the day, Sport Australia head John Wylie said it would be a lot less harmful than cavalier disregard for player and fan welfare. He at least had a clear view.

Player and fan welfare came first, Tiley insisted. It was just a matter of seeing a way through. Meanwhile, Melbourne’s air quality was rated as ‘‘poor’’, the EPA warned people to stay indoors, medical authorities urged tennis officials to adopt a conservative approach to persevering with play, race meetings were cancelled – notice how we’re suddenly more concerned about racehorse welfare than human? – but at the tennis, play went on.

Only those who had the discretion to stop did. South African Kevin Anderson in the exhibition event at Kooyong had, had enough. But those who had to play – the scrappers and battlers in the qualifying Australian Open tournament at Melbourne Park – played. Where there was smoke, they had to fire. You suspect the game’s heavy hitters wouldn’t cop it. But they weren’t here. They didn’t have to worry about smoke alarms.

Possibly, behind the smokescreen, the advice was that there was no greater risk for players on Wednesday than on the sort of blazing, blasting north wind afternoon that is the Open’s more usual stage. But no one would say what policy was being applied or even if there was one. As far as we could see, which was not very far, there was not. Where this smoke was, there was only, ahem, obfuscation.

Evidently, tennis can deal with smoke as long as it is coming from a machine on a stage in yet another ‘‘promotion’’.

So the day started in smog and finished in murk. Then a thunderstorm struck and washed away the smoke and the urgency.

For now. For what was an unprecedented problem, at least now there is a precedent, which is just as well because if the forecast holds, it might have to invoked next week during the Open proper.

Where there is smoke then, there had better a hard, fast and transparent rule. That much is clear.