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      Sofia Kenin: Moved to Tears, and Victory

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySofia Kenin: Moved to Tears, and VictoryOnce the defending Australian Open champion is on the court, it’s all about “grooving in the game.”Sofia Kenin ended 2020 ranked No. 4 in the world and was named the WTA Player of the Year.Credit…Jonathan DiMaggio/Getty ImagesFeb. 6, 2021, 6:41 p.m. ETSofia Kenin had just beaten Ashleigh Barty, the world No. 1, to reach the final at the Australian Open last January. Still in her tennis clothes and seated on a bench in the locker room next to her friend and doubles partner, Bethanie Mattek-Sands, Kenin glanced at her phone and put her hands to her mouth.“Andy Roddick just tweeted. Oh my God, Oh my God,” Kenin said as she read aloud the former world No. 1’s message. “‘This girl has become the goods,’” Roddick wrote, urging her to win the title.“I will,” Kenin yelled into her phone. Then she cried.Kenin, 22, met Roddick when she was a 7-year-old Florida phenomenon playing exhibition matches with the former world No. 1s Jim Courier and Venus and Serena Williams. She told a reporter that she knew how to return Roddick’s 150-plus m.p.h. serve by split-stepping and hitting with a short backswing.Tears have become Kenin’s mantra. She cried from nerves before every match during last year’s Australian Open and then sobbed with joy after she beat Garbiñe Muguruza to win her first major title.She fought back tears of frustration in the middle of her French Open final-round loss to Iga Swiatek and then let them flow as she sat courtside during the trophy presentation.Sofia Kenin after she defeated Garbiñe Muguruza to win the Australian Open last year for her first major title.Credit…Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesKenin entered last year’s Australian Open ranked outside the top 10. Helped by a potent backhand down the line, a well-disguised drop shot and an unwavering will to win, she ended the Covid-truncated season ranked No. 4 and was named the WTA Player of the Year.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What’s with all the tears?I don’t know. I try to handle it. I can’t go on the court crying because then it’s a big advantage for my opponent, so I have to wipe my tears, have a good warm-up, feel the ball and then start grooving in the game. That’s when I forget I was crying and just focus on the points.Do you cry before every match?I did in Australia last year. I wasn’t doing it on purpose, it was just happening. And then, I’m superstitious so I was like, I got to cry. I’m not a good actress.In last year’s final, you were at 2-2 in the third set, down 0-40 on your serve, and you hit five straight winners. How did you do that?Yeah, yeah, I know those points. I just watched them on TV again, and I got a little emotional. Those were really clutch points, probably the best points of my life.Novak Djokovic, your fellow Australian Open defending champion, became an inspiration for you last year. How did he help?I was watching his match, and I messaged him on Instagram. I was hoping he would win so I would have an excuse to congratulate him. Then he was on the practice court next to me the day before the final, and he came up and gave me some advice. He just told me to enjoy the moment and leave it all out there. I think I’m going to ask him how to handle the pressure of being a defending champion. He’s got a lot of experience with that.Not long after you won in Australia, the tour was shut down for five months because of the pandemic. Did that make you angry?It hit me hard because it was supposed to be the best thing that ever happened. Three months of practicing and everything canceled.I wasn’t in a depression, but I was really down. I didn’t want to be on the court. But when we started again, I was super excited to go out and compete, even though it was really unfortunate that there were no fans.Heading into Melbourne, what are you most excited about, and what are you most afraid of?I’m definitely happy that I get to experience being a defending champion. That’s quite special. Then, I’m most afraid to lose and lose early.How are you different from that wide-eyed 7-year-old who wanted to return Roddick’s serve?Well, I won a Slam, and I got to the final of another one. So that’s a big difference.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Ashleigh Barty Seeded First in Australian Open Draw

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAshleigh Barty, Back on the Court, Is Top Seeded at HomeBut Naomi Osaka could face a tough path in the women’s draw at the Australian Open.Ashleigh Barty in a doubles match at the Yarra Valley Classic on Friday.Credit…Jonathan Dimaggio/Getty ImagesFeb. 5, 2021Updated 1:02 p.m. ETTop-ranked Ashleigh Barty once more sits atop the Australian Open women’s singles draw that was made Friday afternoon in Melbourne, and gives her country its best chance to win its home Grand Slam.Barty has held the No. 1 ranking without interruption since September 2019. But that streak, made possible by the WTA Tour keeping 2019 ranking points intact during a season of upheaval, does not quite reveal the reality of her last 12 months.Before this week, Barty had not played a tour match in nearly a year. At last year’s Australian Open, she was seeded No. 1 and lost in a semifinal to the eventual champion, Sofia Kenin. Then, when the coronavirus pandemic disrupted sports, she stayed home in Queensland and remained there even as some tournaments were held in other parts of the world.Barty has looked strong in a warm-up tournament this week at Melbourne Park, reaching the final of the Yarra Valley Classic after a withdrawal from Serena Williams. Still, it is yet to be seen how she will perform during the Grand Slam tournament, which is scheduled to begin Monday, given her limited match preparation.Barty’s path in the women’s singles draw is largely favorable. She opens against 77th-ranked Danka Kovinic. Should Barty reach the semifinals, she could get a rematch against Kenin, who is seeded fourth this year. Kenin, who also reached the finals of the French Open in October, has said she is uneasy about defending a Grand Slam title for the first time.“Obviously very nervous, but I’m going to do my best and we’re going to see how it goes,” Kenin said this week.Kenin received a seemingly comfortable opening match against the 130th-ranked wild-card Maddison Inglis, but could face trouble in the second round, where she would have to face frequent giant-killer Kaia Kanepi or the 2018 U.S. Open semifinalist Anastasija Sevastova.The 2019 Australian Open champion, Naomi Osaka, sits in the bottom half of the draw seeded third, where she landed one of the most brutal opening challenges: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, a talented Russian veteran who has reached the quarterfinals each of the last two years in Melbourne.Osaka, who ended last season on an 11-match winning streak after winning the U.S. Open, faces a potentially loaded path to the semifinals after Pavlyuchenkova, including 27th-seeded Ons Jabeur; last year’s runner-up, Garbiñe Muguruza; 2016 champion Angelique Kerber; the 2019 runner-up, Petra Kvitova; the seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams, and eighth-seeded Bianca Andreescu, who is playing in her first Grand Slam event since winning the 2019 U.S. Open.Tenth-seeded Serena Williams, who is seeking her 24th Grand Slam title, could await whoever advances from Osaka’s quarter of the draw. Williams opens against the combative Laura Siegemund, but her toughest test might come from the enigmatic player who looms in the fourth round: seventh-seeded Aryna Sabalenka. Despite the pandemic-decimated schedule, Sabalenka has won four WTA titles in the last 12 months, including the final two tournaments of last season and the first of this year. But Sabalenka has not played well at Grand Slam events, only once advancing to even the fourth round in 12 main draw appearances.Whoever advances from Williams’s and Sabalenka’s section very likely has a tough battle on her hands in the quarterfinals as well, with both second-seeded Simona Halep and 15th-seeded Iga Swiatek looming. Swiatek won the French Open in October.On the men’s side of the tournament, the already dim hopes among American players got even dimmer after the draw.With the highest-ranked American man, John Isner, choosing to stay home, 27th-seeded Taylor Fritz is the lone seed from the United States in men’s singles. He could face the next-highest ranked American man, his friend Reilly Opelka, in the second round. But whoever comes out of that part of the draw would most likely run into the buzz saw of Novak Djokovic in the third round.The top-seeded Djokovic, who has won eight Australian Open titles including the last two, opens his tournament against the Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, and could face another young American, 2019 quarterfinalist Frances Tiafoe, in the second round.One of Djokovic’s toughest potential tests looms in the fourth round, where he could face the 17th-seeded Stan Wawrinka. Wawrinka is one of only three players to have beaten Djokovic in Melbourne in the last 10 years. He did so in the 2014 quarterfinals en route to winning his first Grand Slam title.Djokovic could face third-seeded Dominic Thiem in the semifinals in what would be a rematch of last year’s final. Second-seeded Rafael Nadal, in his first try at breaking the Grand Slam men’s singles titles record after tying the absent Roger Federer at last year’s French Open, opens his tournament against the 56th-ranked Serbian player, Laslo Djere.Two of Nadal’s most intriguing possible early opponents play each other in the first round: 21st-seeded Alex de Minaur, who is the highest-ranked Australian man, and Tennys Sandgren, the Tennessean who had seven match points against Federer in last year’s quarterfinals but could not convert any of them.Nadal could face the fourth-seeded Daniil Medvedev, who is on a 12-match win streak after winning the ATP Finals and Paris Indoors Masters last fall, in the semifinals.The draws on Friday were delayed one day because of problems with the coronavirus. A quarantine worker at one of the hotels where players were staying tested positive, prompting tournament officials to halt activities on Thursday. Instead of a splashy, prime-time ceremony to reveal the first-round pairings, the draws were done in a back room and streamed online.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      For Melburnians, the Australian Open Tests Anxieties About the Virus

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor Melburnians, the Australian Open Tests Anxieties About the VirusAustralians have gone to great lengths to control the coronavirus. And some don’t want to throw that away for a tennis tournament.A worker cleaned during a warm-up session at Melbourne Park on Thursday.Credit…David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 4, 2021, 1:02 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — From the banks of the Yarra River to the vineyards of Mornington Peninsula, the news out of muggy Melbourne Park sent shivers across the state of Victoria.A worker at one of the hotels where players and officials were quarantined ahead of the Australian Open had tested positive for the coronavirus. The announcement, made late Wednesday, carried an irksome echo for Melburnians who have endured three lockdowns, including one that lasted 111 days, to successfully subdue the coronavirus.“There’s no reason for people to panic,” Daniel Andrews, Victoria’s premier, said on Thursday. But in many circles of this city, that button had already been pressed. The first tennis major each year is the crown jewel in this country’s sporting calendar, but even before the positive result snapped the state’s 28-day streak of zero community transmission, many Australians seemed conflicted about going forward with the event.Ian Hickie, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Sydney, said that Australia shut down the country last year — at tremendous cost to the economy and people’s mental health — “so we are spared the physical health disaster of North America and Europe and South America.”To risk giving back those hard-won gains “just doesn’t make sense outside a very narrow business sector,” he said, adding, “I think it would be safe to say most people are furious that it’s gone ahead.”The letters sections of Australia’s newspapers in recent weeks have become a Greek chorus, with readers railing about the hypocrisy of welcoming international visitors while continuing to shut out Australian citizens stuck abroad and about the dissonance of preaching about public health and safety while seeming to prioritize a world showcase event.The tournament had planned to allow up to 30,000 paying fans a day on the grounds, but the positive test prompted some ticket holders to ask for refunds on Twitter. Six men’s and women’s tuneup events at Melbourne Park were suspended Thursday, with matches rescheduled for Friday. The draw for the Australian Open was also postponed by a day to Friday. Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, remained resolute that the Australian Open would start, as scheduled, on Monday.Craig Tiley spoke at a news conference on Thursday as tune-up events for the Australian Open were suspended for the day.Credit…Tennis Australia, via Associated Press“This is not about no risk,” Tiley said. “There’s no such thing as no risk. There’s always going to be risk. The objective is to minimize it as much as possible.”Restrictions on travel to a nation surrounded by water have helped Australia get and keep the virus largely under control. There were 52 active coronavirus cases in the country as of Thursday and nine people in the hospital. With a population of 25.8 million people — about four million more than live in Florida — Australia has had 28,838 cases and 909 deaths related to the virus.That more than 1,200 visitors associated with the Australian Open, including those from countries where variants of the virus have shown to be more transmissible, were given exceptions to enter the country confounded Hickie. “Our social cohesion and cooperativeness isn’t something that you can buy, and the sense that some people are just more important than others is a very un-Australian concept,” he said.In mid-January, as the players settled into their mandatory 14-day quarantine — some more cheerfully than others — Australians seemed divided. Some were aligned with tennis and government officials who looked at Victoria as a liberator rescuing international sport from the tyranny of the pandemic. Others believed that Australia’s standing as one of the leading countries in containing the virus carried more prestige than its standing as one of tennis’s four Grand Slam host countries.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Ahead of the Australian Open, 2 Wild Weeks of Practice

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationTimelineWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Craziest Two Weeks of Tennis Practice EverThe organizers of the Australian Open promised local residents that the tournament would not set off a coronavirus outbreak. Making good on that promise is very complex.Tennis players waiting for transport to practice at the front of the Grand Hyatt Melbourne Hotel on Wednesday. Each player was allowed to train with one other in the first week of preparation for the tournament, with a coach overseeing. Groups of four will be permitted the second week.Credit…Asanka Ratnayake/Getty ImagesJan. 24, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The intricate ballet begins at sunrise and ends after dark, a complicated series of movements requiring the utmost precision for what has long been a very simple task — getting tennis players to and from the courts so they can practice ahead of a professional tournament.There is a strict routine to enforce social distancing: a series of knocks on hotel doors every five minutes, checking and rechecking that hallways are clear and that people are where they must be, whether that is in a van, or on the court, or the gym, or a dining pod, and then a thorough cleaning of their trail. The whole process, moving every available player to and from training in waves, can last almost 16 hours.Alarms not going off or a little dawdling can cost players their precious daily chance to emerge from their rooms and prepare for the Australian Open, the first major tournament of the year, scheduled to start on Feb. 8.“The amount of planning is amazing,” Kevin Anderson, the veteran South African, said of the regimen, which began early last week, soon after a fleet of players arrived in the country on specially chartered flights. “You don’t see anybody.”This is what happens when you try to bring more than 1,200 people, including hundreds of athletes, from overseas to a country that has largely rid itself of the coronavirus, and that will go to great lengths to assure that it does not return to the community.After months of intense, police-enforced lockdowns throughout the country, Australia has averaged just 11 daily cases the past two weeks. The limited number of travelers allowed in from overseas each day has accounted for most of the positive tests. In other words, in a country of more than 25 million people, community spread is largely nonexistent. The effort to keep things that way, while holding the Open and multiple warm-up events, has been bumpy. Ten people arriving on three of the chartered flights for the events, including one player, have tested positive for the coronavirus.That prompted health officials to order all 72 players on those planes to stay in their hotel rooms for 14 days.One of those 72, Paula Badosa of Spain, tested positive Wednesday, seemingly dashing any hopes that players from those flights who have repeatedly tested negative since landing might be released early from the hard lockdown. Badosa, 23, flew to Australia from Abu Dhabi, on the same flight that transported Bianca Andreescu’s coach, Sylvain Bruneau, who tested positive for the virus shortly after landing in Melbourne. All of the players had expected to be able to spend two hours practicing at a tennis center and 90 minutes in a gym every day during the two weeks leading up to the competitions. After the 72 players learned they were being locked down, organizers faced a mini-rebellion.A hotel quarantine worker in protective equipment directing a van used to transport players and support teams to Melbourne Park for their practice sessions.Credit…Asanka Ratnayake/Getty ImagesMelburnians, who were subject to a strict 111-day lockdown from June to October that closed schools and businesses and prevented them from leaving their homes for more than an hour each day, have reacted angrily. Ticket sales came to a standstill. Politicians denounced the decision to hold the competitions.“We will be in that darkest hour for a while, and then there will be a dawn,” Craig Tiley, chief executive of Tennis Australia, which organizes the Australian Open, said Friday afternoon. “That dawn will start when the events start.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Australian Open: See How Tennis Players Train in Quarantine

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      #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

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      #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

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      #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

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      #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