Quarantine chaos ahead of Australian Open
Tennis elite enjoy a luxury stay in Adelaide while 72 lesser lights isolate in Melbourne hotel rooms
A TOTAL of 72 tennis players are now being forced to quarantine for two weeks ahead of the Australian Open after another positive test was revealed yesterday. Of the 17 charter flights laid on by the tournament to
Melbourne, at least three were found to contain at least one infected passenger on arrival. That means 72 players, as of last night, and more than 100 other personnel will not be allowed to leave their rooms for a fortnight, though others will be permitted five hours’ respite per day. There is growing anger among the rump of Melbourne-based players at favourable conditions being offered to a small group of elite stars, including Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal, who were diverted to Adelaide with their sizeable entourages.
WITH its views of Adelaide’s beautiful cricket ground, and tucked away in the city’s plush inner northern suburbs, the luxury Majestic Suites is a hotel fit for sporting superstars.
It is here that tennis’s elite players are billeted with their large entourages for the next fortnight ahead of the Australian Open, 450 miles from the chaos that has greeted the arrival of the rankand-file in Melbourne.
Equipped with sunny balconies, from where a smiling Novak Djokovic greeted a loyal fan at the weekend, it is a stark reminder that tennis is a sport of haves and have nots.
Back in Melbourne, 25 more lower-ranked players were being told that they face a two-week lockdown at their various hotels after a new positive test emerged from a chartered plane that had landed from Doha.
That takes to 72 (as of last night), plus support staff, the total of those informed they will not be allowed out for the previously agreed five hours training per day, after positive tests were found among fellow travellers.
Feelings are running high among the large majority stationed in the Victorian capital, as they look enviously at the treatment the star names are getting in South Australia.
Stan Wawrinka, one-time Australian Open champion, reacted contemptuously on social media to a letter that Djokovic has sent to the tournament asking for improved treatment and facilities for all players.
‘From Adelaide? Ahhahah,’ responded Wawrinka to French journalist Eric Saillot, who posted details of the missive sent by the world No 1.
The Melbourne cohort, even those on unaffected flights, had their first day’s scheduled practice further postponed yesterday.
Rattled tournament organisers were said to have offered players in Melbourne £175 worth of daily food delivery vouchers, also to cover their coaches, to try and shore up morale.
And so the divide between the chosen few and others in tennis is exposed again.
It has been highlighted by the decision to divert the elite to Adelaide, where they enjoy different conditions. Djokovic, the
Williams sisters, Rafael Nadal, Naomi Osaka, Wimbledon champion Simona Halep and US Open winner Dominic Thiem are all there with inflated support groups. Among those with Serena are husband Alexis Ohanian, daughter Olympia, mother
Oracene and sister Venus, her designated hitting partner. Nadal has in tow his father and public relations manager among others.
Off the court they have inter connecting rooms in luxury apartments that have kitchenettes and balconies. When it comes to practice, they are allowed four people on court with them, as opposed to the player-plus-one permitted in Melbourne.
They were able to begin practice on Saturday, with Osaka inadvertently rubbing it in for the less fortunate by posting a picture from
Adelaide’s state of the art courts.
On Saturday, the non-maskwearing Djokovic waved from his people carrier while Williams was head down in her vehicle, under a peaked cap.
Among all cities in the world, Adelaide has been about the least
touched by Covid. Six portable gyms have been placed alongside the courts. Newly erected fences with meshing and patrolling security guards are on hand to deter fans and media.
The inequality situation has been caused by demands from the South Australia government that they should get some payback this year for their recent £30m investment in the new courts.
In return for the special treatment, the top players will take part in a special exhibition on January 29. Then they will join up with everyone else in Melbourne.
Top players getting favours is nothing new and not restricted to the Australian Open, as pointed out by eminent Adelaide-based coach Roger Rasheed.
‘At Wimbledon, seeded players have the seeds’ dressing room and then there is the rest. Seeded players have a little more preferential treatment, but players in every sport have always had that,’ he said.
A further hierarchy has developed in Melbourne, loosely based on what ranking a player has. Some are in better hotels than others, and some have had fitness equipment delivered to their rooms while others are having to improvise.
Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas posted footage of himself hitting a ball into a makeshift bounceback made from a mattress.
The wider context is that of ordinary Australians being perplexed at so many tennis personnel being allowed to fly in, at a time when many fellow citizens are stranded abroad waiting for repatriation.
There are even blocks on people travelling from one State to another, causing anger among some of the local population.
Victoria MP Tim Smith took to social media to attack Wawrinka after the Swiss posted an innocent enough picture of himself sitting alone in his hotel room.
‘For every Victorian currently in Sydney that is banned from returning home by Daniel Andrews (Victorian Premier), this obscene double standard, where this flog of a tennis player is allowed in, and our own people aren’t, must make so many Victorian families incandescent,’ he said.
Meanwhile Emma Cassar – head of Melbourne’s niftilytitled justice department Corrections Victoria – has warned quarantined players they are not to even open their hotel room doors, after reports of them trying to talk down corridors to each other.
The Australian Open’s reputation as the ‘Happy Slam’ is being sorely tested.