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    Margaret Court to Get a Top Australian Honor, Drawing Outrage

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTop Honor for a Tennis Player With Intolerant Views Draws OutrageMargaret Court, an Australian record breaker known for her homophobic comments, is set to receive one of the nation’s highest public service awards.Margaret Court at the Australian Open last year, during a ceremony marking 50 years since she won the Grand Slam.Credit…Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesJan. 22, 2021Updated 7:03 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Australia has conferred one of its highest civilian honors upon former prime ministers, elite athletes, philanthropists, actors and academics for “the highest degree in service to Australia or humanity at large.”But when news broke on Friday that the public service award would be handed next week to the tennis legend Margaret Court, whose sporting legacy has been marred by her vocal homophobia and opposition to same-sex marriage, it sparked outrage in many corners of the country.Condemnation poured out from Australia’s political opposition, with Daniel Andrews, the premier of the state of Victoria and a member of the Labor Party, asking at a news conference why her views, “which are disgraceful, hurtful and cost lives, should be honored.”Nick McKim, leader of the progressive Greens party, said in an email, “Margaret Court has spent more of her life campaigning against marriage equality than she ever spent on the tennis courts.” He added that the award was “a disgraceful insult to everyone Margaret Court has harmed by voicing support for apartheid and her decades-long campaign against L.G.B.T.I.Q.+ rights.”Ms. Court did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment. She told a local TV station that she had “never had anyone out in the community come to me and say, ‘Well we don’t like you,’ ‘we don’t like your beliefs’ or anything else. I’ve had thousands come up to me and tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Thank you.’”Asked about Mr. Andrews’s comments, she said, “Well, I’ll call him blessed.”Ms. Court is scheduled to be awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia on Tuesday, Australia Day, for her service as a tennis player and as a mentor to young athletes. The honor falls under the Order of Australia, which confers public recognition for “outstanding achievement and service.”Nominations are made by an independent council and approved by the governor general. Hundreds of Australians receive the Order of Australia every year, and it has four tiers. The Companion award is the highest tier, and it is bestowed on only a handful of people each year. In 2020, just five people received it.Ms. Court, 78, was named an Officer of the Order of Australia — the second-highest tier — in 2007 for her unparalleled achievements in tennis.As Australia’s most successful female tennis player, she has 64 majors titles across singles, doubles and mixed doubles categories. She is a 24-time Grand Slam singles winner, a record that no male or female player has been able to beat. Serena Williams is next in line, one Grand Slam title away.Since retiring, Ms. Court’s legacy has been increasingly overshadowed by her intolerant views, and she has alienated many in the tennis world. In 1991, she said that lesbianism had ruined women’s tennis. A Pentecostal minister, she has vocally opposed same-sex marriage, compared L.G.B.T.Q. education to the work of the devil and denounced transgender athletes.There are ongoing calls to strip Ms. Court’s name from Melbourne Park’s second-biggest stadium, which was named after her in 2003 and is one of the sites of the Australian Open, set to begin next month. Referring to the annual eruptions of anger surrounding Ms. Court, Mr. Andrews, the premier of Victoria, said, “Do we really have to do this every single summer?”Tennis Australia, the country’s governing body for the sport, has resisted pressure to rename the stadium while seeking to distance itself from Ms. Court. Last year, when it recognized the 50th anniversary of her 1970 Grand Slam, it put out a disclaimer: “Tennis Australia does not agree with Court’s personal views, which have demeaned and hurt many in our community over a number of years.”Prime Minister Scott Morrison, when asked about the new award at a news conference on Friday, said he could not comment, given that the recipients had not been publicly announced. (The news about Ms. Court has been circulating online.) He added that they had been chosen via an “independent set of processes” and that the system “recognizes Australians from right across the full spectrum of achievement in this country.”Last year, the Order of Australia awards were overshadowed by controversy around one recipient, Bettina Arndt, a vocal campaigner against what she describes as the “demonization of men in our society.” Ms. Arndt was widely condemned for praising a police officer for “keeping an open mind” about whether a man accused of murdering his wife and children had been “driven too far.”Following that public backlash, the Council for the Order of Australia released a statement noting that its recommendations “are not an endorsement of the political, religious or social views of recipients, nor is conferral of an honor an endorsement of the personally held beliefs of recipients.”It added, “In a system that recognizes hundreds of people each year, it is inevitable that each list will include some people who others believe should not be recognized.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Australian Open: See How Tennis Players Train in Quarantine

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesU.S. Travel BanVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNo Courts, No Going Outside: How Tennis Players Are ImprovisingThe athletes waiting in quarantine for the Australian Open are figuring out creative ways to stay busy (and swing a tennis racket) before they can hit the court.Roberto Carballés Baena waits in his hotel in Melbourne.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 21, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Thump, thump, thump on the ceiling. Thwack, Thwack, thwack on the wall.After seven days restricted to a hotel room as part of a 14-day quarantine ahead of the Australian Open, it’s fair to wonder if paranoia has entered like a stealth intruder. Are the thumps and thwacks my version of Edgar Allan Poe’s beating heart?Thank goodness, no. The player in the room directly above is practicing footwork drills. The player directly next door is hitting balls against our shared wall.This is what final preparations for this year’s Australian Open look and sound like for more than three dozen players forced into a hard 14-day lockdown after people on their chartered flights tested positive for coronavirus after arriving in Melbourne.The other athletes lucky enough to have traveled with nobody who tested positive? They get five hours outside their rooms each day to practice, train and eat.Novak Djokovic, right, hitting on a hotel room balcony with a support staff member in North Adelaide, South Australia.Credit…Morgan Sette/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPlaying a Grand Slam tennis tournament in a country that has managed to contain the coronavirus – and wants to keep it that way – was always going to require the fearlessness of Rafael Nadal and the ingenuity of Hsieh Su-wei. If, in addition to singles and doubles, this year’s tournament were to add another category – suites – the hands-down favorites would be Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay and Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan.Sven Groeneveld, the Dutch tennis coach, riding a stationary bicycle in his hotel room.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo practice his groundstrokes, Cuevas has turned a spare bed into a vertical backboard.Once he is finished, he converts the bed to … a surfboard.Putintseva has created a doubles-alley-sized course in her room.She set up plastic cones to complete her cardio-blast agility drills.But at one point, her self-isolation was breached by a Melbourne mouse, prompting a change in rooms. (She had to change rooms again because of a second mouse.)Creativity, unlike the quarantined players, knows no boundaries. Tennys Sandgren of the United States demonstrated on his social media feed how to get double the fun out of an exercise bike, taking hold of the one in his room to whip out a set of clean-and-jerk lifts.Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic affixed rectangles made of tape across her picture window and directed forehands and backhands at the small targets.The motto of the 2021 Australian Open: Where there’s a wall, there’s a way.Ben Rothenberg contributed reporting from Washington.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Rash of Coronavirus Cases Poses Early Challenge for the Australian Open

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRash of Coronavirus Cases Poses Early Challenge for the Australian OpenWith several positive tests among people arriving from abroad, and a strict quarantine, the Australian Open is not going the way organizers expected it would.Australian Open officials have been criticized for tough measures after a rash of virus cases.Credit…Mike Owen/Getty ImagesJan. 18, 2021, 4:44 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — It was late December, and Craig Tiley was feeling good. After months of negotiations with government officials and the world’s top tennis players, Tiley, the head of Tennis Australia, finally had the green light to stage the Australian Open in the middle of the pandemic.Health officials and government leaders had come around to the idea of more than a thousand people arriving from overseas, including hundreds of players who would enjoy privileges during their 14-day quarantine period that Australian citizens could not. And the players had agreed to spend virtually their entire day in their hotel rooms for two weeks and to limit their on-court practice time to just two hours each day.“The players are being great,” Tiley said then of the deal for a limited quarantine period. “They realized if they didn’t want to do it, there would be no Australian Open, no lead-in events and no chance at $83 million in prize money.”A month later, Tiley, a native of South Africa and a former college coach in the United States, is at the center of mounting anger from every side after six people on three chartered flights tested positive for the coronavirus upon their arrival in Melbourne.The positive tests have rankled citizens, some of whom complained that Tennis Australia was putting residents at risk to placate millionaire tennis players. The chief health officer for the state of Victoria took action, ordering everyone on the chartered planes, including 72 players who were supposed to be able to practice and spend time in the gym at the tennis center, to stay in their hotel rooms for 14 days, even though none of the players had tested positive.Then came a report that the top-ranked men’s player, Novak Djokovic, the leader of a nascent players’ association, issued a series of demands, including reducing the isolation period for players who continued to test negative and moving as many players as possible to private homes with a tennis court to facilitate training. Health officials quickly rejected them.“We’ve been knocked around because of the flights and the challenges,” Tiley said Monday afternoon during a teleconference with some of the people in quarantine. “I have not had any place I can hide.”In a matter of days, Tiley has gone from one of the most visible cheerleaders for Australian sports to its leading punching bag, while his organization’s signature tournament has transformed from a potential celebration in the rare corner of the world where the virus has been kept under control to yet another symbol of virus uncertainty.Craig Tiley, the tournament director, has defended the quarantines that are rankling the players. Credit…Michael Dodge/EPA, via ShutterstockIn the past 48 hours, government officials, including members of parliament and the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, went on television and attacked the decision to prioritize tennis over what they believed were more essential needs, such as bringing in seasonal workers, easing state border restrictions or allowing some 40,000 Australians to return from overseas. They cannot, in part, because of strict limits on daily international arrivals.The limits remain even though Australia long ago ended one of the world’s strictest virus-related lockdowns. In Melbourne, the police enforced a nearly four-month assault on the virus. During that time, schools and businesses were closed and residents were allowed outside for just one hour (and later two) each day, either to exercise or to go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. They also had to remain within three miles of home unless they had a permit.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    With Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in Australia

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in AustraliaAfter some passengers on charter flights tested positive for the coronavirus, 47 players will not be allowed to practice for two weeks.Players, coaches and officials arriving at a hotel in Melbourne where they will be required to spend most of their time before the start of the Australian Open.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMatthew Futterman and Jan. 16, 2021MELBOURNE, Australia — Organizers of the Australian Open faced a rebellion from players after passengers on two charter flights bringing them to Melbourne tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting orders for everyone aboard to go into quarantine for two weeks.The flights carried 47 players — including several top competitors who had just played the first event of the women’s tour last week in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — as well as some journalists, coaches and others.Passengers were asked to have negative test results for the virus within 72 hours of the flights’ departures from Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi. They were tested again after landing in Melbourne, and four people on the flights were found to have the virus as of Sunday afternoon, prompting health officials in the Australian state of Victoria to order that all passengers remain in their hotel rooms for 14 days.For the players on the flights, that means stricter restrictions than they had planned on before the Australian Open, the first major tennis tournament of 2021, which is scheduled to begin Feb. 8.Entrants in the tournament agreed to stay in their rooms for 19 hours a day and were allowed five hours daily at the tennis center to practice, train and eat.Those rules got even tighter Saturday for the 47 players on the two charter flights, who were told they could not leave their hotel rooms at all.Tennis officials appealed for more leniency for players who repeatedly test negative in their first days in Australia, but government officials declined to soften the rules. Players and tennis officials were not aware when they moved ahead with plans to stage the tournament that the government might impose such restrictions.“We are communicating with everyone on this flight, and particularly the playing group whose conditions have now changed, to ensure their needs are being catered to as much as possible, and that they are fully appraised of the situation,” said Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, which is organizing the tournament.Tiley held a series of difficult videoconferencing sessions with players to explain the changes.In a livestream on Instagram on Saturday night, Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine told her fellow player Paula Badosa of Spain that she had been blindsided by the ruling and would have to compete on an uneven playing field.“It’s about the idea of staying in a room for two weeks and being able to compete,” said Kostyuk, who could not remember the last time she did not pick up a racket for two weeks. “We have to stay in quarantine, but we have to fulfill expectations.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Andy Murray Tests Positive for Coronavirus

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAndy Murray’s Australian Open Said to Be in Doubt After Positive TestMurray reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus just before he was to leave for Melbourne, where strict quarantine rules await all players.Andy Murray in September at the French Open, where he lost in the first round.Credit…Charles Platiau/ReutersJan. 14, 2021, 9:02 a.m. ETAndy Murray has reportedly tested positive for coronavirus, putting his participation in next month’s Australian Open in doubt.Murray had been planning to fly to Melbourne this week to begin a two-week quarantine required by the tournament, which begins Feb. 8, three weeks later than usual because of the pandemic.Under rules agreed to by the tournament and Australia’s government, players, coaches and anyone else traveling to the event must return a negative virus test before departing. More testing — and strict rules about movement, housing and playing — await upon arrival.Murray, who was reported to be not showing any symptoms of Covid-19, was said to be hopeful he might still be able to play in the tournament.A three-time Grand Slam single champion, Murray, 33, has fallen to No. 123 in the world rankings after playing only a handful of matches in 2020 because of a pelvic injury. He received a wild card to this year’s Australian Open, where he is a five-time runner-up.The tournament has put in place strict rules to try to limit the spread of the virus as hundreds of players and their entourages, as well as news media members and other support staff, arrive in the country from around the world. Bubbles will be set up for everything from housing to training, and players and others will be subject to daily virus testing.During the 14-day quarantine period after they arrive in Australia, players will be able to leave their hotel rooms to work out for no more than five hours a day at a secure facility. The Victoria government said hundreds of staff members had been hired to attend to the needs of those in the quarantine hotels, and that the police would play a role in enforcing quarantine rules.Qualifying for the Australian Open has been taking place in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.Some players have simply stayed home. The American John Isner, ranked No. 25, said he would not play in the event because the quarantine measures would keep him away from his family for too long.No. 5 Roger Federer will also miss the event, citing knee problems. Most of the other top-ranked men’s players are still planning to attend.The American Tennys Sandgren, ranked No. 50, flew to Australia despite a recent positive test. He received special clearance after health officials determined that he was not infectious, because he showed no symptoms and had previously tested positive for the virus in November. “Some people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who are noninfectious can continue to shed the virus for several months,” the tournament said.After a spike in August, Australia has largely contained the virus through strict border closings lockdowns and other measures. The country is currently averaging about 20 new cases a day.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Tennis Players Mull Competition or Rest at Start of New Season

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTennis Players Mull Competition or Rest at Start of New SeasonWith the Australian Open looming, the first big decision for 2021 contenders was whether to play in the first tennis tournaments of the year.Aryna Sabalenka was among the players who decided to compete in the first tournaments of the tennis season. Some are skipping the events to focus more squarely on the Australian Open.Credit…Francois Nel/Getty ImagesJan. 10, 2021, 1:00 a.m. ETFiguring out where and how to start the tennis season is usually pretty easy for the world’s top players. They catch a flight to Australia around Christmas, spend a few days getting over the jet lag, then compete for two weeks in warm-up tournaments ahead of the Australian Open.But with the sport’s calendar upended by the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted a three-week delay of the Australian Open, players have had to make difficult calculations about the value of traveling to compete now, as infection rates are still soaring in many parts of the world.As the 2021 professional tennis season began this week, several of the top players opted not to attend the only opening tournaments before they have to quarantine for two weeks in Australia. This year, they cannot simply show up in Australia and compete right away.Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 among the men, remained on their practice courts rather than venturing to Turkey or Florida for the first events on their tour (Roger Federer is out with a knee injury). Andy Murray of Britain, a three-time Grand Slam winner, was supposed to play in Florida, then grew skittish about traveling during the pandemic and pulled out. On the women’s side, the American stars Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka skipped the event in Abu Dhabi.The plans for those three tournaments were announced only in late December, as the organizers of the Australian Open decided that the start of their Grand Slam event would be delayed until Feb. 8 and that all participants would be required to heavily restrict their movements for two weeks ahead of the tournament.“I was ready to go and ready to play matches,” said Cam Norrie of Britain, who played in the Florida tournament, the Delray Beach Open, after practicing indoors in London since late November. “But for a lot of players since it was sprung on them a bit last minute, they were not ready and didn’t want to compete.”The schedule follows an off-season that, for most players, was longer than the usual six-week break. The pandemic forced the women’s tour to cancel its fall Asia swing. On the men’s side, for all but the top players, there has not been a tournament since early November.Sofia Kenin, 22, the reigning Australian Open champion, went to Abu Dhabi and said at a news conference this week that opting to play was a “last-minute decision” motivated in part by a desire “just to get out of the house.”Also competing there were Karolina Pliskova, a former world No. 1, and Coco Gauff, the rising American teenager.For most top players, the decision to play or not to play this week ultimately came down to whether they thought playing real matches now would help them get mentally and physically prepared for the rigors of a Grand Slam.“I need some time to get back into rhythm and play more matches,” Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, who won the last two tournaments of 2020, told reporters as she competed in Abu Dhabi this week. She won her 11th consecutive match on Friday.The open question for Sabalenka and other players is how their individual choices during the first weeks of the season might play into the unusual routines for this Australian Open.During the quarantine, players will be allowed to practice for only two hours each day, initially with just one practice partner and then with two more in the second week. They will also get to spend about two hours in the gym, and one other hour at the tennis center in Melbourne. They must spend the 19 other hours in their hotel rooms.After the quarantine, the men’s and women’s tours will hold three competitive events in Melbourne in the week before the Open.Craig Morris, a former coach for the Australian Samantha Stosur, who won the 2011 U.S. Open, said that given how little tennis took place last year, competition this month would be valuable. “Anything they can get under the belt is going to help,” he said.Tennis players are constantly searching for the optimal rhythm — to hit the ball cleanly on nearly every shot and to feel confident about their strokes regardless of the situation. It’s not something that can easily be turned on and off, and for many players that zone is reached through the right combination of practice and match play.The coronavirus is just the newest twist to that hunt.Murray, 31, was ready to play this week, but announced in a news release on New Year’s Eve that he was too concerned about the pandemic to make the trip.“Given the increase in Covid rates and the trans-Atlantic flights involved, I want to minimize the risks ahead of the Australian Open,” Murray said.Several other notable players, including the Italians Matteo Berrettini and Fabio Fognini, plus John Isner of the United States and Adrian Mannarino of France, were competing in either Turkey or Florida.Plenty of players competed this week because they knew they could use some prize money after so many competitive opportunities were canceled last year, when the tour was shut down for about five months. Many also wanted to see if the off-season work they put in was paying dividends on the court.Leylah Fernandez, 18, a fast-improving Canadian, said making the trip to Abu Dhabi was “a very difficult decision,” but with all the uncertainty hanging over the tennis schedule — and all sports in 2021 — she and her team took the bird in hand.“We wanted to get as many matches under my belt as we could,” Fernandez said after winning her first match on Wednesday.Tommy Paul, an American who spent the off-season training at the tennis complex in Delray Beach, Fla., said the realigned schedule had shifted his approach to the weeks leading up to a Grand Slam. Paul, 23, said in an interview Wednesday that he spent the off-season trying to turn himself into more of an all-court player by coming to the net more often.The Delray Beach tournament, he said, offered him an opportunity to measure his progress and figure out what he still needs to work on. The two-week quarantine in Australia, where his hitting partners will be the Americans Steve Johnson and Sam Querrey, will give him the chance to work on the weaknesses he identifies in competition at the Delray Beach event. Paul won his first round match Thursday over Nam Ji-sung of South Korea, 6-1, 6-4.“If there is something I don’t like about my game I have time to fix it.” Paul said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    BNP Paribas Open Tennis Tournament Is Postponed due to Coronavirus

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus PlanVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAnother Top U.S. Tennis Tournament Is Postponed Because of the CoronavirusThe BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., hopes to move to later in the year.The BNP Paribas Open, which in March became one of the first U.S. sporting events canceled because of the coronavirus, has been postponed for 2021.Credit…Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressDec. 29, 2020Updated 5:30 p.m. ETOne of the most important American tennis tournaments will not take place in the United States this spring because the country has not been able to bring the coronavirus under control, tennis officials announced Wednesday.The BNP Paribas Open, scheduled for Indian Wells, Calif., in March, has been postponed, most likely until late 2021. The professional tennis tours did not announce a substitute date but hope to do so in the coming weeks and months.“Alternative dates are being assessed for the tournament to potentially take place later in the year,” the ATP Tour said in a statement.Future events remain on the schedule for now and BNP Paribas Open organizers said they were working with the men’s and women’s tours to find an alternative date later in 2021.Indian Wells is not among the sport’s four Grand Slam tournaments, but it is in the next tier of importance for both the men’s and women’s tours. Officials have been scrambling for weeks to try to find a way to salvage the event as rates of coronavirus infection increase in the United States, especially in California.The tournament, known informally as the “Fifth Slam,” represents a rare chance to promote the sport with nearly all of the top players in the world in the United States. Now, those players will most likely appear in the United States at the Miami Open in late March, assuming that tournament remains on the schedule, and then return after Wimbledon in midsummer for the hardcourt season that culminates with the United States Open in late August.The announcement of the change was the latest disruption in a sport that shut down for five months this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, starting with the Indian Wells tournament.The 2020 Australian Open was held as usual in January, but the three other Grand Slam events were disrupted. Wimbledon was canceled for the first time since World War II. The United States Open started in New York in late August, as scheduled, but without spectators, and with most players cloistered in a pair of Long Island hotels when they were not competing. The start of the French Open was moved to late September from late May. It took place in front of just a smattering of spectators in cool, blustery conditions.Now the schedule for the first quarter of 2021 has essentially been redrawn. The Australian Open moved from the last two weeks in January to the middle two weeks in February. Several tuneup tournaments have been shifted or canceled.Instead of at Indian Wells, tournaments will take place in Qatar, Chile, France and Mexico.Tennis officials are hoping that after Miami, the sport can embark on its usual clay-court schedule in the spring, with events in Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome and then the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris, which is scheduled to begin in late May.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Roger Federer Will Skip the Australian Open

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKnee Problems Prompt Roger Federer to Skip the Australian OpenThe 20-time Grand Slam champion had two knee surgeries in 2020. He wants to come back, but it remains unclear when he will play.Roger Federer last played competitively during the 2020 Australian Open.Credit…Edgar Su/ReutersDec. 28, 2020, 2:40 p.m. ETAs organizers finalized plans to move the Australian Open to February from its usual January start, the top 100 men and women in the world rushed to sign up, yearning to play a Grand Slam in a country with few cases of the coronavirus, even if it meant a two-week quarantine upon arrival.Then, just days after signing on, Roger Federer announced Monday he would not play in Australia after all as he works his way back from knee surgeries.Federer hopes to play again, but will a return take the form of a farewell tour or a legitimate run at championships? Federer turns 40 in August.He has not played a competitive tournament since the 2020 Australian Open, where he made it through two five-set matches before falling to Novak Djokovic, the eight-time champion, in the semifinals. He also played a charity match in South Africa in February, but he announced early during the pandemic that he would shut down for the rest of the season as the sport itself was working out when it might return.As he recovered in Switzerland from his first knee surgery during the initial lockdown, Federer charmed fans by hitting in the snow outside his house. Then came his announcement that he’d had a second surgery in the spring, and he spoke of his slow recovery.“I’ve had two knee surgeries, so it has been dominated by that — by rehabbing, being on crutches, recovering from the surgery and taking it step by step. I must say I feel much better already again,” he said during a sponsor appearance last summer.As expected, he skipped the United States Open and the French Open. Tennis inched toward its next phase, as Dominic Thiem and Alexander Zverev battled in the U.S. Open final to become the first new men’s Grand Slam winner since 2014, with Thiem coming out on top. (Rafael Nadal skipped the tournament to avoid traveling to the U.S., and Djokovic was ejected for swatting a ball that hit a line judge.)Nadal tied Federer with his 20th Grand Slam at the French Open in October.Federer remained hopeful that he might be able to appear in Australia, especially after it became clear that the tournament would be pushed back three weeks to accommodate strict protocols for international travelers, including players.But in a statement to The Associated Press, Tony Godsick, Federer’s agent, said Federer had decided that despite recent progress, his best chance for success in whatever time he has left in professional tennis would be to return after the Australian Open.“I will start discussions this coming week for tournaments that begin in late February and then start to build a schedule for the rest of the year,” Godsick said.That could include plans for the Olympics, where Federer won a gold medal in doubles in 2008 and a silver in singles in 2012.In a statement, Craig Tiley, the Australian Open tournament director, said: “The Australian Open has always held a special place in his heart — remember it was Roger who first called the Australian Open the ‘happy slam’.”Federer is still the world No. 5. He last won the Australian Open in 2018 at 37. It is his most recent Grand Slam title. After he nearly won Wimbledon in 2019, it seemed as though he might be able to compete at the highest level for several more years.Now it is unclear when he might come back, much less contend against his longtime rivals, Djokovic and Nadal.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More