Why sun can spoil the Open
When the Rod Laver Arena court was swimming before even the sharpest eyes and the inevitable moment came for the roof to be closed, and while Petra Kvitova pressed herself into the shadows at one end, Danielle Collins stood out in the sun as if in mute protest.
Collins hails from Florida, the sunshine state. Her father, Walter, was a commercial fisherman and now is a landscape gardener who is still out there working in the sun every day at 82. Like retired Australian Casey Dellacqua, Collins is energised rather than enervated by the sun’s blast. And solarpowered she was, right in this Australian Open semi-final.
But there comes a point, and it is now quantifiable: 5.0 on the heat stress scale and indoors we go. There is a school that stands with Collins, including several players. It’s a summer sport, an outdoor tournament, they say. The conditions are part of the challenge.
It was outdoors only because there was no viable indoor court, but it was never the Australian outdoor open. Open never meant unconditionally exposed. Now there are two roofed courts here, and one at Wimbledon, and Flushing Meadows, and soon at Roland Garros, too. If they take a little of the sun from summer, it’s only the bit we don’t need.
Footy used to be played only outdoors, usually in gluey mud, and cricket on rain-affected pitches, and international netball on asphalt, and tennis on grass, or else dirt, and soccer sometimes in snow, and all of them only in natural night. Dealing with the vagaries was part of the challenge, but only because there was no alternative.
Now test cricket sometimes is played at night, and limited overs cricket indoors. So is footy. Tennis is played pretty much everywhere and how. Golf is played in the desert, and once was on the moon. Soccer pitches are heated, basketball stadiums chilled and double as skating rinks. You can ski in Dubai and swim in the Arctic circle. They play ice hockey in Florida, and California, and for the sake of it sometimes outdoors. Basketball, too.
Some of these are one-offs and novelties, but so was a roofed stadium once, a last resort rather than a first. Technology won’t be resisted, and mostly should not be.
Then there is player amenity. Again, history teaches us lessons. Once, it was taken as a sign of weakness to drink water on the cricket field. Now cricketers are virtually hooked up to a round-theclock irrigation system. Once, footballers sported bloodied wounds like decorations. Now they are dispatched.
In all sports, there was this idea that physical duress was all part of the game, and we watched on macabrely. Now there is a consensus that these are only games, in this instance a game of tennis, bringing with it plenty of perfectly watchable stress anyway without withholding available relief in the doubtful cause of testing character. That way lies the Adelaide Crows and their travails. That way one day lies the courtroom.
Closing the roof on Thursday did change the environment, and the match. Collins powered off, Kvitova came into her own. The scoreboard does not lie: 4-4 at the time, 8-2 thereafter. Collins was, if not disgruntled, then not altogether gruntled. ‘‘I think that no matter what the situation is, you know, they need to start the match the way it’s going to finish,’’ she said. ‘‘I think they do that in football, and I think it certainly changed a little bit of the rhythm in the match. Indoor tennis is a different game. Certainly [it] had its effect. But again, it is what it is.’’
Kvitova, from the Czech Republic via Monte Carlo, predictably thought it was a winner. ‘‘If we do have those options with the roof, I think it’s great,’’ she said. ‘‘I think sometimes it’s very dangerous to play in this kind of heat.’’
What were the alternatives anyway? On Thursday, they would have been either to start with the roof closed, or not to start at all. Neither, you imagine, would have been acceptable to the sunworshippers.
Besides, sport is about the players, but it is not only about them. When the tipping point came, the official temperature was 41, whatever that translates to courtside. It fell agreeably to around to 25. There was a facility, and it was properly employed. The only remaining meteorological confusion was in the celebrity seats, where Keith Urban’s shirt was unbuttoned as if on Miami beach and Anna Wintour still sported sunglasses. Even Australian cricketers don’t do that any more.
The final word was as involuntary as it was honest. When it was announced at Rod Laver Arena that the roof would be shut, Collins shrugged and Kvitova kept her counsel, but the crowd erupted as if this was championship point.
The fact they were there at all on this hellish day earned them a voice, and it should never be ignored. Tennis has learned to be sun smart, and that means making certain that no one, not players, not ancillaries, not fans, are left sun silly.