Shapovalov may quit Australian Open over smoke hazard
Scandinavian is unlikely to rest for too long following her decision to retire from tennis, writes Simon Briggs
Canada’s Denis Shapovalov has taken the toughest stance yet on bushfire smoke at the Australian Open, saying he would rather pull out than risk his health in polluted air.
The issue of poor air quality has dogged the qualifying competition, which ended yesterday. On Tuesday, Slovenia’s Dalila Jakupovic retired from her match with breathing difficulties. If anything similar were to happen in the main event – which starts tonight, UK time – the backlash against Tennis Australia would be significant.
Asked how he would respond if he felt conditions were unsafe, Shapovalov said: “I wouldn’t play. Obviously it’s a grand slam, it’s a big opportunity, but I’m 20 years old. I don’t want to risk my life, risk my health, playing out there in these conditions.
“For my own health, if it gets bad, I don’t see what the point is. I think everyone’s kind of on the same page. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone happy with the way things are being dealt with.”
Tennis Australia produced an airquality policy on Friday that suspends play if the concentration of dangerous P2.5 particles exceeds 200 micrograms per cubic metre. Another clause suggested that, when the score is between 97 and 200, “this will trigger a discussion between medical staff and officials about the advisability or otherwise of proceeding with match play”.
But Shapovalov – the 13th seed, who is due to open play on Margaret Court Arena at just after midnight (GMT) tonight – sounded unconvinced about the scientific evidence underpinning this decision.
“They send some email and say they have professionals looking at it and they use the term ‘playable’,” he said.
“You get warnings from the news telling people to stay inside, that it’s not good to be outside, breathing this stuff in. And then you get an email from the tournament saying it’s playable and you have to go out and put your life in jeopardy.
“You see the effects on players it has right now, the last couple of days, but also you don’t know what it’s going to do later in our lives, and how it could affect us if we’re breathing this air in for two weeks.”
Last week, several lower-ranked players called for more support from the big names on this emotive issue. But the ATP Tour’s senior pro, Roger Federer, defended himself yesterday.
“So what can I do?” he said. “Can I go on court and say, ‘Everybody stop play?’ I don’t think I can do more. Some guys are always going to complain.”
The smoke haze was back in Melbourne yesterday after a couple of clear days that had followed Wednesday night’s thunderstorm. Local measurements suggested that the pollution score climbed towards 100, which is described as “moderate”.
On the first afternoon of the Australian Open, Caroline Wozniacki will walk out on to Melbourne Arena to play world No 92 Kristie Ahn. Should she lose, there will be no encore. After 15 years on the tour, this event is to be her final bow.
Speaking yesterday at Melbourne Park, Wozniacki played down any sense of imminent loss. “So far I’m calm and enjoying myself. I have my family here, which is great. [But] I’m sure once the last ball is hit, it’s going to be emotional,” she said.
She also gave the smallest hint of the daily struggle no one else sees. With her very Scandinavian temperament – sunny and grounded at the same time – Wozniacki has made success look natural. And yet, she never had an arsenal to match her most famous rivals. Every one of her 638 professional victories had to be chiselled from the grass, the clay or the blue-tinted Plexicushion.
“This new generation of players are mostly tall and pretty fast,” Wozniacki, who will turn 30 in July, said. “It’s a faster game – more of the one, two, three-shot rallies. Every single day, I pushed myself to be a better player. But I just had a look inside of myself and it felt right. I’m ready to start a new chapter in my life.”
Last season, Wozniacki failed to win a title for the first time since 2007. One factor was surely the auto-immune disease, rheumatoid arthritis, which has afflicted her for the past 18 months at least. For a player whose athleticism was always her greatest weapon, this sort of debilitating ailment was the equivalent of sugar in the petrol tank.
But it could also be that Wozniacki’s finest hour – the Australian Open title she won two years ago – represented the beginning of the end.
Was there a deep, dark part of her psyche which switched off after that crowning glory? Most great champions rely on what you might call a prove-them-all-wrong gene.
Until January 2018, the lack of a major had been the big weakness of Wozniacki’s resume, which otherwise placed her just to the side of the podium occupied by the three giantesses (Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters).
By beating Simona Halep here in brutally hot and humid conditions, Wozniacki ticked the biggest box in any player’s career, while throwing the insulting words of Sharapova’s agent Max Eisenbud – who once described her as a “journeyman [who] never won a slam” – back in his face. The whole sport was delighted for a woman who is rarely less than charming and upbeat. In fact, her popularity defined the response to the title.
Had a more divisive character – Serena Williams, for instance – called the game-changing medical time-out that Wozniacki deployed when trailing 4-3 in the deciding set, that incident would have shaped the ensuing narrative. As it was, Halep told reporters “the rule is the rule, I don’t complain”, and it has barely been mentioned since. The
only sense of shock was shared among fellow players who had never seen Wozniacki pull a stunt like that before.
Whatever happened, Wozniacki deserved her brightest medal. Few players have done so much to support the women’s tour, whether by slogging around some of its furthest-flung outposts (her 30 WTA titles included Kuala Lumpur, Seoul and Luxembourg) or agreeing to every interview and off-court promotion.
If Wozniacki never quite took her place among the tennis immortals, it was because of two enduring weaknesses, which tended to be highlighted in the biggest tournaments. The first was a shaky forehand technique, which left her too reliant on her laser-guided backhand. The second was what behavioural economists describe as “loss aversion”: that very human desire to protect what you have, rather than looking for more. This played out in both her hatred of unforced errors, and her refusal to tinker with her own method.
A passionate Liverpool supporter, Wozniacki was once asked which position she would have opted for in football – the sport her father and coach Piotr had played for a living. Revealingly, she plumped for goalkeeper. Saving her team from accidents felt more natural than leading the attack.
Casting an eye over Wozniacki’s draw in Melbourne, you would expect her to have too much class for Ahn, a 27-year-old American who has won only three grand-slam matches. But her likely second-round opponent is Dayana Yastremska, a fast-rising Ukrainian who reached the final of this week’s Adelaide International. Get past that and Serena Williams – Wozniacki’s best friend on the tour – is lurking not far behind.
So what happens next? Wozniacki has already spoken of her desire to start a family with former professional basketball player David Lee, whom she married in a glamorous Tuscan ceremony last summer. Apart from that, she has a couple of business ventures in the pipeline, but is not ready to talk about them yet.
“I told David when I retire, I want us to just chill for a while and do absolutely nothing,” Wozniacki said yesterday. “I’m going to go skiing with the family, a couple of girls’ trips. We have to also try to fit in our honeymoon. But otherwise we’re working on my rheumatoid arthritis, the foundation, the health-education programme that we’re doing.
“Actually my diary is pretty packed till probably about the end of May, the start of June.”
This is pure Wozniacki – the great maximiser. She might like the idea of a rest, but something important always gets in the way.