Life in Oz Open quarantine

MUMBAI: “You’re not allowed to leave the room or open the door unless you hear a knock.” Sumit Nagal could be describing a scene out of a thriller; instead, he is simply talking about a regular day in quarantine in Melbourne. For a group of 72 players, a knock on the door usually means either a RT-PCR test or a delivery of food or some other essential.

The days leading up to the 2021 Australian Open, starting February 8, has presented a unique situation for the world’s tennis pros, a 14-day hard quarantine period that had quite a few players expressing their displeasure. The two Grand Slams held amid the pandemic prior to this (US Open and French Open) had bio bubbles, one where after a negative test and certain hours of isolation, players could head to the courts to train.

“Here, you have 14 days of testing. But if you test negative 14 times, what is the point of still being in the room?” Rohan Bopanna, India’s top-ranked doubles pro at world No 38, said.

These are the rules for the 2021 Australian Open: each player flying into Melbourne aboard one of the 15 chartered flights bringing in all the people involved in the Slam would have to be in quarantine for 14 days despite having a negative test before boarding. Players are allowed five hours of freedom per day for training.

Despite those meticulous arrangements, at least 10 people across three flights tested positive once they landed in Melbourne. Thus, all 72 players aboard those flights were put into a full quarantine, with even five training hours taken away.

Bopanna is part of that list of 72, Nagal isn’t. “Some of us are lucky enough to have five hours to train. But it’s very, very strict,” Nagal, the world No 137 who was handed a wild card entry into the season’s first Slam, said.

Nagal has to train with the same hitting partner for a week—for the first week it’s Russian qualifier Aslan Karatsev. In that five-hour window, Nagal spends two hours on the court, puts in 90 minutes of gym and fitness work, takes one hour to eat and warm down and half hour to travel. It’s also the only time he can interact in person with his coach Sascha Nensel.

“You have your timings given the night before. You have to wait in your room till they come get you. Then you practice on the court and eat with your partner. There’s a gym area around every court, and you can’t go from one area to another,” Nagal says. “It’s a very new formula for us, but you have to look at the bigger picture. After 14 days, you can head out of the hotel.”

Bopanna accepts the postquarantine, no-bubble scenario as a big plus too; but at the moment, the 40-year-old is struggling to sit around all day in his hotel room for two weeks.

“It’s nowhere close to a normal routine. There’s no point waking up and saying, ‘OK let me do my exercises’, after which I’m just lazing around in the room. Your body becomes lethargic,” Bopanna said.

But after the initial uproar, players have found a way to get the best out of whatever they have in the room—be it hitting against the wall, mattresses or curtains. Bopanna’s isolation experiments include posting at least a video per day on Instagram, making his own bed and cleaning the outside of his window with water for a brighter view of a giant white wall.

It also helps that Bopanna’s wife, Supriya Annaiah, is a psychologist. “I’ve been speaking to her daily. There is no point in getting frustrated. It can be tough and that’s where you need to find a way,” he says. For Bopanna that includes watching stand-up comic Russell Peters’s videos, TED Talks, Netflix, yoga and online courses. “I’ve been doing some part-time courses; the last one was on international entertainment and sports marketing,” he said.

Nagal has his own challenges; he will begin his year with a Slam straight from the off-season and squeezing his entire training routine in those five hours has been hard. “Normally you play 2-3 hours of tennis, an hour of fitness, physio, massage, ice packs etc. You can change hitting partners, you can train in your time and plan things. Now you can’t do that. I understand we’re here early, but once we finish our quarantine, we only have a day to play a tournament.”

Sumit Nagal