Players test positive for virus before Aussie Open
Tennis players for the Australian Open can be seen in their hotel rooms in Melbourne on Tuesday. The players will be in quarantine for two weeks before the next month’s grand slam.
Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley has ruled out any change in the best-of-five set format for men’s singles matches at the season-opening tennis major as three more COVID-19 cases — two of them players — were reported among the international arrivals for the tournament.
There are 72 players now in hard quarantine and unable to practice because of nine active coronavirus cases — an increase in three since the weekend — among the incoming travelers to Melbourne.
In good news for players in lockdown, there were suggestions that some may be allowed to leave their rooms for practice before the 14-day hard quarantine period. More than 1,200 players, coaches, staff, officials and media arrived on 17 charter flights since last Thursday to prepare for the Australian Open, which starts on February 8. COVID-19 cases have been linked to three of those flights, from Abu Dhabi, Doha, Qatar and Los Angeles.
Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said some of the cases linked to the tournament will be reclassified as “non-infectious shedding,” potentially allowing changes for some players in lockdown. “If you’ve got say 30 people who are deemed a close contact because they’ve been on a plane with a case, and the case is no longer an active case but a historic shedding, well that would release those people from that hard lockdown,” Andrews said.
All people traveling to Australia for the tennis had to return a negative test before boarding the charter flights, although there was at least one exemption in the case of the historic shedding.
Tennys Sandgren, a two-time quarterfinalist at Melbourne Park, originally tested positive for the coronavirus in November and the Victorian state health authorities determined after reviewing the American player’s medical records that he was no longer contagious, although still shedding viral particles. So he was given approval to fly to Australia last week.
Tiley, appearing on Nine Network television on Tuesday, rejected calls from some men’s players to reduce Australian Open matches to best-of-three sets instead of best of five.
“We’re a Grand Slam,” Tiley said. “Right now, three out of five sets for the men and two out of three sets for the women is the position we plan on sticking to.”
Some players have used social media to detail their perceived hardships of being in lockdown. “These are high performing athletes and it is hard to keep a high performing athlete in a room,” Tiley said. “This is the contribution that they have to make in order to get the privilege of when they do come out to compete for A$80 million (US$62 million) in prize money.”
Tiley said the positive tests among some of the arriving players and officials were not a surprise.
“There was going to be an expectation to have several positive cases,” Tiley said. “But now we’re in a position where they’re in lockdown, designed to protect the community.”
The season-opening Grand Slam event was delayed for three weeks because of the pandemic. Australia’s international borders are mostly closed, although there are exemptions in special circumstances.
