Puffed-up tennis breaches fans’ trust
There have been much stranger previous first-round results in New Zealand tournaments.
attracted other top 10 players such as Kerry Melville and Francois Durr, so comparatively were much stronger than this year’s event.
Then there was the fuss, apology almost, when featured players Ana Ivanovic and Venus Williams lost in the first round.
Such results were hardly shocks.
Ivanovic and Williams have their eyes on the Australian Open, not Auckland. Ivanovic showed her intent when she immediately withdrew from the doubles after losing in singles, so she could hurry to Australia.
There have been much stranger previous first-round results in New Zealand tournaments.
In 1988, Swede Jonas Svensson arrived in Wellington (yes, there was a professional tournament in the capital back then) with a world ranking of 30.
New Zealand Tennis chief Ian Wells, in a bout of entrepreneurial activity, even approached Svensson to see if he would be interested in playing Davis Cup for New Zealand.
The next day the Swede, the top seed, lost 6-4, 6-1 to New Zealander David Lewis, world ranking 402, and then shot off across the Tasman. No more talk about Davis Cup.
In 1990, Slovak Miloslav Mecir (he made sure he was never called a Czech), was top seed in Auckland. He’d been a popular winner there in 1987 and organisers paid a fortune to get him back.
The former world No 4 then meandered through a 6-3, 6-3 loss to lanky New Zealander Steve Guy (ranking 209), shrugged his shoulders and caught the next plane to Australia.
Such results are on the cards in tournaments that immediately precede Grand Slam events, and don’t happen just in New Zealand.
Of more concern was the Auckland organisers’ decision to bar people who had bought tickets to see the two semi-finals last week from watching the completion of the second semi, between Caroline Wozniacki and Sloane Stephens.
The match was interrupted on the Friday evening by rain and as the players left the court there was an announcement that ticketholders could return the following morning to watch the completion.
When they duly turned up, they were declined entry. Only people with tickets for the Saturday final were permitted to watch the resumed semi-final.
Understandably, tennis fans who had bought tickets, taken the organisers at their word of the previous evening, made the extra trip to the courts and paid for parking, felt duped.
The organisers should be more worried about that breach of trust than some of their drawcards being eliminated early in the tournament.