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      Keeping the Australian Open Safe from Coronavirus

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka Wins TitleMen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThe Cleanest Open EverAn army of workers toiled to create a safe environment at the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 21, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — A funny thing happened at the end of plenty of matches at the Australian Open this year: Players gathered their used water bottles and their sweat-soaked towels and put them in garbage and laundry bags rather than leaving them for someone else to clean up and, in the process, come into contact with their germs.Cleanliness has truly been a virtue at this tournament. Workers scour the grounds looking for recently vacated tables to scrub. The moderator of news conferences cleans the dais with a disinfecting wipe as soon as a player leaves it. Bathrooms are seemingly in a constant state of scrubbing.Studies have shown that the coronavirus does not easily spread from unclean surfaces. People have to breathe in the tiny virus particles. But a clean tournament helps make all the people who come to Melbourne Park feel that they are in a healthful atmosphere. Perhaps cleaner sporting events will be a legacy of Covid-19 that stays with us, but it does not come easy. It takes work.Cleaners working in Rod Laver Arena between sessions of the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThousands of spectators visited Melbourne Park during the tournament. Australia, with its strict protocols, has averaged just a handful of coronavirus cases per day since October.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesCarolyn Blackledge and her son Corey wore masks while helping fans as customer experience ambassadors. Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesSanitation efforts began at the front gates: A staff member disinfected the turnstiles at the entrance of Melbourne Park.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThe tournament employed 1,200 cleaners who scoured high-contact surfaces at Melbourne Park. Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesWorking in pairs, cleaners disinfected surfaces including tables, handrails, chairs and water fountains.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesCredit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFans at Melbourne Park had access to 800 hand-sanitizing stations, kept full by a team of workers. Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesIn a moment of team bonding, court services workers broke into a dance at the start of their shift.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesSama Bajracharya, 29, on a break from working as a cleaner at Melbourne Park. Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesA corporate suite at Rod Laver Arena was cleaned before the women’s singles final. Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesAttendance was limited in an effort to keep fans and players safe. Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesMany of the hygiene workers were from Latin America and Nepal and in Melbourne on student visas. Andres Diaz and Yesica Gutierrez carried disinfectant bottles at all times.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesCredit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThe court services team used ultraviolet disinfecting guns to sanitize player areas before the start of play.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesAll of the efforts of the sanitation team were meant to create an environment that felt clean and healthful.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Ashleigh Barty Loses in Australian Open Quarterfinals

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAshleigh Barty Loses in Australian Open QuarterfinalsBarty, the No. 1 seed in the women’s singles draw, had won the first set comfortably but fell to the 25th-seeded Karolina Muchova.Ashleigh Barty waiting for Karolina Muchova to return to the court during a medical timeout. Barty played more inconsistently after the stoppage.Credit…Dave Hunt/EPA, via ShutterstockFeb. 16, 2021Updated 9:59 p.m. ETThe top-seeded Ashleigh Barty, who represented her country’s best chance for a homegrown Australian Open champion, lost in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, falling 1-6, 6-3, 6-2, to the 25th-seeded Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic.Barty began the match in dominant form, leading Muchova by a set and a break at 6-1, 2-0 at Rod Laver Arena.Muchova took an off-court medical timeout early in the second set, with doctors checking her vital signs and cooling her down with ice.“My head was spinning, so I took a break,” Muchova said in her on-court interview after the match.After Muchova returned to the court, Barty became inconsistent. At 2-1, she hit four unforced errors to drop her serve and level the second set. She finished with 19 unforced errors in the second set, after having only six in the first.As Barty faltered, Muchova played with increasing poise and patience, exemplified by one rally in the second set in which she hit five overhead smashes before Barty finally made an error.Barty’s focus continued to drift in the third set. She made many errors on shots that should have been simple, not adjusting well to Muchova’s changes of pace. Barty seemed to regain her concentration in the final game, earning three break points, but she could not convert any of them.Muchova closed out the victory with an ace on her first match point. Muchova, a rare player who can match Barty’s all-court play and versatility, was playing in her second Grand Slam quarterfinal after making it to that round at Wimbledon in 2019.Barty’s departure from a court that hosted no fans for a fifth consecutive day was a blow for the tournament. Fans had been kept from the grounds for five days after a so-called circuit breaker lockdown imposed by the government because of a small coronavirus outbreak, but they are set to be allowed to return Thursday for the semifinals.Barty did not travel internationally to rejoin the tour when it resumed last year from its pandemic pause, but she retained her No. 1 ranking because the WTA largely froze its ranking system and her points from winning the French Open and the WTA Finals in 2019 did not expire.Barty had won a tournament, the Yarra Valley Classic, held in Melbourne the week before the Australian Open began. She had struggled with a left leg injury early in the tournament that forced her to withdraw from the doubles draw to reduce her workload, but showed few ill effects from it in the second week of the tournament.Barty’s exit means that there will be a player ranked outside the Top 20 in the Australian Open final. Muchova will face an American, either the 22nd-seeded Jennifer Brady or unseeded Jessica Pegula, in the semifinals.No Australian woman has won the Australian Open singles title since Chris O’Neil in 1978. Barty had reached the semifinals of the Australian Open last year, losing to Sofia Kenin, who won the tournament.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trust Me, Sports Without Fans Is Not Sports

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownFifth seed Stefanos Tsipsipas celebrated facing a cheering crowd after winning his second round match.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesTrust Me, Sports Without Fans Is Not SportsFor five days the Australian Open had cozy stadiums half-filled with fervent fans, and sports once again felt normal. Then a snap lockdown quieted the stands.Fifth seed Stefanos Tsipsipas celebrated facing a cheering crowd after winning his second round match.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 14, 2021Updated 6:05 a.m. ETRemember what sports was like with crowds? Listen.Recorded as Nick Kyrgios took on Dominic Thiem in Melbourne on Friday night.MELBOURNE, Australia — For roughly the past two decades, the analytics crowd has peddled the idea that sports is essentially math, that what unfolds on the field of play is predictable and intelligible if viewed through a proper algorithm. Occasionally that crowd has even been right. And in many ways the pandemic sports environment was an analytics aficionado’s dream, a chance for games to unfold in a laboratory, free of the noise, both literal and figurative, that can turn an expected outcome into a beautiful mess.Now, nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, we really do know the roar of the crowd is as vital to sports as a ball or a net. The artificial crowd noise that Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. have piped in, both for those in the stadiums and arenas and for people watching at home, is a terrible facsimile that makes the spectator-free games feel nothing like sports at all. What stage actors refer to as the “fourth wall” — the metaphorical barrier between performers and spectators — doesn’t exist in sports. A crowd’s passion can seemingly help power comebacks. Its scorn can smother one, too. For five glorious days at the 2021 Australian Open, I got to experience that noise again, because government officials allowed up to 30,000 fans, about 50 percent capacity, to attend the tournament each day. It was both a joy and a revelation to rediscover the power of what quantum physicists call the “observer effect” — the fact that any observation, however passive, alters an outcome — even in a half-capacity crowd of tennis fans. Sports felt like Sports once more.Nick Kyrgios and Dominic Thiem in one of the last matches with a crowd before the tournament closed to the public.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFans left the Australian Open on Friday after it was announced that the tournament would proceed without spectators for the next five days.Credit…Jaimi Joy/ReutersThen on Friday, the coronavirus did what it has done so relentlessly for the past 11 months: It shut down the party. A recent outbreak was what much of the world would consider a nuisance. But in Australia, which has managed the pandemic more effectively than any other major economy, it qualified as a critical mass.The cluster of coronavirus cases grew to more than a dozen, and the state government of Victoria, where Melbourne is, declared a “snap lockdown” of five days, beginning at midnight Friday.Everyone, except those deemed essential workers, must stay home, though two hours of outdoor exercise and one hour to go to the grocery store or pharmacy are permitted. Players and people considered essential in running the Australian Open will be allowed at Melbourne Park. Spectators, sadly, must stay away until perhaps the singles semifinals, scheduled to start Thursday.“The players will compete in a bubble not dissimilar to what they have done throughout the year,” said Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, which organizes the tournament.No one is happy about it.Fans watched Serena Williams during a practice session at Melbourne Park ahead of her second-round win.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York Times“It’s been really fun to have the crowd back, especially here,” Serena Williams said after she beat Anastasia Potapova in straight sets in the third round Friday. “But, you know what, at the end of the day we have to do what’s best. Hopefully it will be all right.”I am here to tell you it won’t be. After what I witnessed during the first five days, it’s going to be terrible, without the essential dynamics that make sports the ultimate in improvisational theater.Nick Kyrgios, the tennis antihero everywhere except Australia, where he is beloved, rode the fans to a miracle Wednesday night. He saved two match points in the fourth set against Ugo Humbert, the rising 22-year-old Frenchman. Then he edged Humbert in the fifth set in front of an explosive crowd that never gave up on its hometown hero.Kyrgios is the rare tennis player who brings in rugby fans. They screamed their heads off to keep Kyrgios alive and Humbert, the No. 29 seed, on edge until the very last point.“Half-packed and it felt like it was a full stadium,” Kyrgios said. “I got goose bumps toward the end.”Humbert lost those two match points, even though he was serving. He heard the fireworks from the seats a few feet away. As he watched Kyrgios both encourage it and soak it all in, his eyes appeared to fill with fear. There was another set to play, but the crowd was not going to let Humbert get out alive.Fans cheer on Nick Kyrgios of Australia.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesKyrgios has attracted a raucous fan group at the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesIt is not a stretch to say that Humbert wins that match easily on a quiet court.Kyrgios and his crew were back at it Friday night, when he took on Dominic Thiem of Austria, the reigning United States Open champion. The roars started as Kyrgios broke Thiem in the first game. As the crowd bellowed, Kyrgios waved his arms and cupped his ear, signaling to his fans that if he had any chance against the machine-like No. 3 seed, they were it.And so began three-plus hours of interactive drama, with all the seat-banging, taunting and fist-pumping needed for someone who has barely played in a year to stay competitive with one of the best players on the planet. As the match stretched into the fifth set and past 10:30 p.m., a strange clock watching began, because fans were supposed to be home and observing lockdown by midnight.In the end it wasn’t enough, as Thiem prevailed in five sets, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, but it’s hard to believe it would have been close without it. “It’s not the same sport without the crowd,” Kyrgios said.So, here is one big reveal of the past week: All those star athletes who have always insisted they are so locked in that they do not hear the crowd? Well, it seems pretty clear they have been lying.Spectators watched the evening matches outdoors on the big screen at Melbourne Park on the fifth day of the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesHere was Novak Djokovic, who has won this championship eight times. He has described Rod Laver Arena as his backyard. He was getting ready to play a game the other day, when a clump of women with a Serbian flag stood up and serenaded him with the “Ole-Ole” tune, culminating with, “Novak Djokovic is hot, hot, hot!”Djokovic gave up on trying to play cool. He stepped back from the court, started giggling, then shook his head to regain his focus.Here was Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia, trying to serve out the third set for what would have likely been the biggest win of her career, an upset of Simona Halep, the No. 2 seed. She was in front of a hometown crowd that carried her all night but couldn’t will her to victory.“I felt that rush of people just cheering for you,” Tomljanovich said, her voice breaking following the loss. “I’m afraid to say it, but it could be the highlight of the year with the atmosphere and the crowd.”She is not the only one. I do not know what I am dreading more about the end of this assignment — the last freezing month of a winter in the Northeast, or the largely empty version of sports that the pandemic has wrought.It’s something, yes, but it is not sports.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      An American Made Week 2 at the Australian Open. He Avoided Djokovic and Nadal.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn American Made Week 2 at the Australian Open. He Avoided Djokovic and Nadal.The next generation of American men are still searching for a big win on a Grand Slam stage against the best players.Mackenzie McDonald was the only American man to make it to the fourth round of the Australian Open.Credit…Andy Brownbill/Associated PressFeb. 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — American men had an awfully good start at the Australian Open. They won seven of 10 matches, placing the most male players from the United States in the second round of the tournament since 2017.Then things got real in a hurry.Only Mackenzie McDonald, 25, a former N.C.A.A. champion out of U.C.L.A. who is battling his way back from hamstring tendon surgery, and Taylor Fritz, a big-serving Californian who is 23 and still evolving, survived to Round 3. By late Saturday afternoon, only McDonald remained.The names of the two men responsible for a lot of the American carnage are familiar: Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. In the span of roughly 55 hours from Wednesday afternoon through Friday night, Djokovic and Nadal dispatched Francis Tiafoe, Michael Mmoh and Fritz.Those wins continued what has become more than a decade of mostly frustrating efforts for American men going up against the game’s so-called Big Three — Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer — especially in the Grand Slam tournaments.According to Greg Sharko of the ATP, the master of match records for men’s tennis, the last American to beat Djokovic at a Grand Slam event was Sam Querrey, who bested him in the third round of Wimbledon in 2016. Since then, Djokovic has won 16 straight matches against American men at all tournaments.Nadal’s win over Mmoh was his 10th straight over an American. The last American to beat Nadal was John Isner, the 6-foot-10 serving machine, at the 2017 Laver Cup. Earlier that year, Querrey beat Nadal at a tournament in Acapulco, Mexico. At the time, Nadal had won 16 consecutive matches over Americans, dating to the summer of 2011.Federer has not lost to an American in a Grand Slam tournament in the past 15 years. Andre Agassi beat Federer at the 2001 United States Open, when Federer was 20.There is, of course, little shame in struggling against Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, who skipped the Australian Open to recover from knee surgery. They are the best of the game’s modern era, the winners of 57 Grand Slam singles championships. For years, they mostly lost to one another in the biggest events.But the failure of an American man to register the kind of signature win that can imbue a fledgling career with invaluable confidence is emblematic of the larger struggle. A country that once dominated the sport has struggled for years to find a successor to Andy Roddick, the last American man to win a Grand Slam tournament, at the 2003 U.S. Open, even as American women continue to thrive.Isner, 35, is the lone American in the top 30. In the 1990s, just as tennis was becoming a truly global sport, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jim Courier were mainstays of the top 10. Canada, which is about one-tenth of the size of the United States, has three men in the top 20. Also, the Australian Open takes place on a hardcourt, the surface that most Americans grow up playing on.“I think I’m more than capable, but it’s a matter of not what I do against Novak but what do you do every day,” Tiafoe, 23, said after he had lost his hard-fought four-set, three-and-a-half-hour battle with Djokovic. “Those matches, losing matches, I don’t think I should.”Fritz came a step closer to beating Djokovic on Friday night, pushing him to five sets as Djokovic struggled through an injury he described as a torn muscle on the right side of his midsection. Fritz appeared to have Djokovic beaten early in the fifth set but fell short as Djokovic began pounding serves and ripping forehands into the corners, as he had early on in the match.An hour after it ended, Fritz remained distraught over too many missed first serves and errors off his forehand. He had taken Djokovic to a tiebreaker in the first set and had then lost seven of the next eight points.“It’s very motivating that we’re so close, but at the same time, we are so far,” Fritz said. “These guys are so good.”And so it was that McDonald, perhaps the most unlikely of all of his countrymen, became the last hope to put an American into the second week of the year’s first Grand Slam. McDonald showed promise three years ago when, not long after leaving U.C.L.A., he made it to the fourth round of Wimbledon, where he lost to Milos Raonic of Canada.Less than a year later, he sustained a torn hamstring tendon while playing doubles at the French Open and underwent surgery. After the operation, he couldn’t leave his apartment for three weeks, and he couldn’t walk for the better part of two months. Slowly, week by week, he began to allow his leg to bear more weight.During the last two years, he has clawed his way back, training at the United States Tennis Association complex in Orlando, Fla., and playing a mix of lower-, middle- and top-tier tournaments. He was No. 192 in the world rankings entering the Australian Open, where he has played nearly flawless tennis and has also been blessed by a friendly draw.His highest-seeded opponent, Borna Coric of Croatia, was the No. 22 seed. After beating Coric in four sets in the second round, McDonald faced Lloyd Harris, 23, of South Africa, who was playing in the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time and is ranked No. 91. It was close early, as McDonald won the first set in a tiebreaker, but not after that. McDonald cranked 12 aces and punished Harris with deep, hard backhands all afternoon.In the fourth round, he gets Daniil Medvedev, the crafty and powerful Russian who is searching for his first Grand Slam title. With Djokovic ailing and Nadal battling a balky but improving lower back, many experts consider Medvedev a favorite to win this tournament.After his win over Harris, McDonald insisted that American players had the raw material to challenge the greats, and everyone else who reaches the later rounds of a Grand Slam event.“The talent is there,” McDonald said. “We just have to stay focused and keep working hard.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Goodbye to Fans at the Australian Open

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowTesting Australians’ VIrus AnxietiesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGoodbye to Fans at the Australian OpenA new coronavirus lockdown for the state of Victoria means five days of no fans at the Grand Slam tournament.Spectators exited Rod Laver Arena mid-match to meet a lockdown deadline on Friday night in Melbourne, Australia.Credit…Dave Hunt/EPA, via ShutterstockFeb. 12, 2021Updated 5:17 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The reigning men’s champion Novak Djokovic was on the ropes on Friday when Melburnians were made to leave Rod Laver Arena. It was 30 minutes before the clock struck midnight, a Cinderella-like moment when their freedom turned to confinement and their lives reverted to what they experienced during a 111-day lockdown last year.As the Australian Open spilled into Saturday, it ended at 1:20 a.m. with Djokovic, the world No. 1, eking out a 7-6 (1), 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 6-2 third-round victory over Taylor Fritz, an American ranked 31st. The stadium lights remained on overnight, but the electricity left the building as the state of Victoria entered a five-day quarantine at 11:59 p.m. that spared the tournament but not the spectators.The retreat of the fans did not sit well with Fritz. “I understand the fact that Victoria is going back into lockdown and people have to go,” he said. “If that’s the case, then we shouldn’t have played tonight if we weren’t going to finish the match on time.”A surreal fifth day of play provided a tableau of the times, with the best-laid plans redirected midstream by a more contagious variant of the coronavirus that was first found in Britain. By Friday, it had infected 13 people linked to a quarantine hotel near the Melbourne airport that was being used to sequester returning travelers.In the early afternoon, as Serena Williams, a seven-time champion, stepped onto Rod Laver Arena’s court for her third-round match, Premier Daniel Andrews of Victoria stepped to a microphone a few miles away to announce a “circuit-breaker” five-day lockdown aimed at preventing a third wave of infection from inundating the state.Victorians, he announced, would be allowed to leave home only for essential shopping, work, caregiving and exercise. Sports and entertainment venues were shutting down, but professional athletes like tennis players were considered in the category of “essential workers” and would be permitted to continue their matches, albeit behind closed doors.It was bittersweet news for the players, who for the first time since last year’s Australian Open were contesting a Grand Slam in front of crowds, with the number of fans allowed on the Melbourne Park grounds each day capped at 30,000.The players had arrived in the country early and completed a 14-day quarantine aimed at protecting Australians from them, so eager were they to play in front of crowds in what promised to be a significant step toward their old normal. Instead, the players found themselves in the new normal established when they traveled last year to New York for the United States Open and to Paris for the French Open: sequestered to protect them from their hosts.“It’s going to be a rough few days for I think everyone,” Williams said after her 7-6 (5), 6-2 victory against the 19-year-old Russian Anastasia Potapova.Serena Williams after beating Anastasia Potapova in the third round.Credit…Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesAll morning, rumors swirled around the tournament grounds, whipped into a tempest by spectators half-watching matches while they scrolled through their news feeds and studied texts from friends and family members.After Andrews confirmed the worst of the rumors, a bottleneck formed in the aisles, with spectators exiting the stadium to call airlines to rebook flights hurrying past those still filing inside. Two fans, Lauren Grundeman and Belinda Brown, waited until after Williams closed out her match to call Qantas Airways. Anticipating that flight schedules would be slashed in the coming days because of the lockdown, they wanted to move up their return travel to Sydney and leave in a few hours’ time.“We were too late,” Grundeman said. “All the flights today sold out a half-hour ago.”Grundeman and Brown considered themselves fortunate to secure seats for a Saturday afternoon return. They weren’t sorry that they came. It was worth the inconvenience, they said, to see Williams inch closer to a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title.“Definitely,” Brown said. “Serena is amazing.”Williams is a charismatic headliner, but the atmosphere was lacking its usual fizz, said Grundeman, who regularly attends the Australian Open. The lines to get inside, which are usually long, were nonexistent on Friday. There were no Swedes with national colors painted on their faces. No Dutch decked head to toe in orange. Grundeman described the energy as “flat.”Friday’s announced attendance, on a day tailor-made for soaking up the sun and world-class groundstrokes, was 22,299. Many Melburnians had said in interviews and letters to newspapers that they were forgoing this year’s event out of an abundance of caution. Brown said she couldn’t blame them.“If I was local, I’d be a bit like, we don’t need people coming and bring extra cases,” she said.Julie Dunlop rose before the sun and phoned her daughter. They held tickets to the day session Friday but Dunlop was discomfited by television reports that a lockdown — or “the dreaded L-word,” as she called it — was imminent. Should they soak up the sunshine before holing up in their houses? Or was the prudent play to stay away?“I was ready to pull the plug on it, but my daughter was keen to come,” said Dunlop, who warmed to the outing as she sat in the stands on an intimate outside court and watched the Australian doubles team of James Duckworth and Marc Polmans defeat Ricardas Berankis and Mikhail Kukushkin.Roughly 100 fans, most of them cheering enthusiastically for Duckworth and Polmans, filled the air with the sounds of solidarity. The Victorian premier hadn’t spoken yet, but Dunlop had a pretty good idea what he was going to say. “We’re lucky in one way to be here before it’s too late,” she said.Spectators cheered during the last match of the day on Court 3.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesIn the stands, fans were checking their phones constantly. But on Court 13, Polmans tuned out everything but his harmony with Duckworth. Afterward, his coach filled him in on the lockdown rumors.“My first question to my coach was, ‘Do you think they’re going to cancel the tournament?’” Polmans said.Craig Tiley, the Tennis Australia chief executive, stood outside Rod Laver Arena on Friday afternoon and wearily assured everybody that the show would go on. “The players will compete in a bubble,” he said, adding that their movements would be restricted to traveling from wherever they were staying to Melbourne Park and back. He told the athletes to be alert, not alarmed.Tiley kept this year’s tournament slogan, “No Place for Impossible,” in his jacket pocket. It was part of a speech best saved for another day. Friday’s news made a line uttered before the tournament by Williams’s sister, Venus, a better motto for the moment: “Stay positive and test negative.”The tournament bubble could burst any day, and then what?“It’s definitely a worry,” Polmans said, adding, “If one of the players tests positive, then I think the tournament’s going to be done.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Australians at Home Open Find Success After Year Without Much Tennis

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowTesting Australians’ VIrus AnxietiesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAustralians at Home Open Find Success After Year Without Much TennisFacing Australia’s strict quarantine rules, Ashleigh Barty, the No. 1 women’s player in the world, skipped tennis last summer and fall. So did some other Australians. They are doing just fine.Ashleigh Barty said she had “absolutely no regrets” about skipping some tennis events this year because of the pandemic.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 9:41 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Ashleigh Barty plowed through the first two rounds of the Australian Open. No surprise there, as Barty, 24, is the top-ranked woman in the world. Except that Barty had a layoff of nearly a year before the run-up to the Australian Open because she opted not to leave Australia, her home country, for much of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.Nick Kyrgios, a folk hero of Australian tennis, similarly spent the past 11 months at home in Canberra, skipping two Grand Slam events and several other playing opportunities. He still captivated the tournament Wednesday night when he came back from two match points in the fourth set against Ugo Humbert, the No. 29 seed, and won it in the fifth in front of an electrified crowd. On Friday, he almost upset third-seeded Dominic Thiem, the reigning United States Open champion, but lost in five sets.The success of Barty and Kyrgios, and that of some of their Aussie brethren, has lifted the spirits of Australian tennis fans who know too well the ongoing disruption caused by the virus, even in a country that has managed the pandemic arguably as effectively as any major economy in the world. Australian players passed up millions in potential prize money and several chances to play on the biggest stages in the sport, but have somehow come through in form.“Absolutely no regrets for me,” Barty said this week as she prepared to play with the weight on her shoulders of her country and its 42-year Australian Open singles championship drought.The difficult decision Barty and her fellow Australians faced is hardly settled, and players from other countries may feel similar pressures as travel restrictions change.Australia’s government has said it plans to continue to require all passengers arriving from outside the country through the end of the year to quarantine in a monitored hotel room for two weeks.For months, Canada has required people coming into the country to quarantine for two weeks, with the possibility of daily checks from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In January, Canada stepped up those restrictions and is requiring a three-night stay in a hotel room for all incoming air travelers while they await the results of a virus test.The policies have forced a difficult choice on players from those countries: If they decide to play and endure all the international travel that professional tennis requires, they basically can’t go home until the end of the season in November — unless they choose to take a significant break.No one has any good answers. Felix Auger-Aliassime, the 20-year-old Canadian who lists his residence in Monaco but still has deep ties to Montreal, said he is trying to figure out when he might be able to see his sister and his parents during the year. He did a two-week quarantine when he returned to Canada last year but isn’t sure when he might be able to manage one again.Milos Raonic said he will probably play less this year so he can spend time with his family.Credit…Dean Lewins/EPA, via ShutterstockMilos Raonic, another Canadian with a residence in Monte Carlo, said he is unlikely to play a full season. He said he saw his parents for just five days last year, rather than for months at a time as he would in a usual year.“My family and those people that are close to me, they’re too important to neglect that aspect of my life,” Raonic said Wednesday after his second-round win over Bernard Tomic of Australia, whose tennis plans for the future are also somewhat up in the air.“It’s not easy,” Tomic said after the loss. “If I leave Australia now, won’t be coming back anytime soon, for sure.”Ajla Tomljanovic, one of the Australians who did play abroad last summer and fall, said the uncertainty of the schedule and the challenge of being away for so long had wreaked havoc with her game.“I’m not looking further than tomorrow,” Tomljanovic said after a brutal loss to Simona Halep, the No. 2 seed. Tomljanovich won the first set and led 5-2 in the third, then lost five straight games. “Everything is such an unknown. Anything can change any second.”That was partly what Barty, Kyrgios, Tomic, the former U.S. Open champion Sam Stosur and several other Australians figured last year when they passed on the revived tennis tours rather than deal with the uncertainty of the virus and the strict policies in Australia, which for months even limited travel between states.Kyrgios notoriously has a love-hate relationship with the game. Tomic is trying to rebuild his once promising career at 28. Stosur, at 36, won her first match at the Australian Open since 2015. All said they did not touch a tennis racket for months, using the time away from the game as a reset. Stosur’s partner gave birth to a girl in June.Barty gave up the most — the unique opportunity to play as the top player in the world and the chance to defend her French Open championship.She spent little time keeping up with or following tennis.“It was more enjoying my time at home and being grateful and appreciative for what I have,” she said.She played a lot of golf. She attended Australian Football League matches and was famously photographed, beer in hand, at the A.F.L. final between Brisbane and Richmond. She got another dog, a Border collie.Barty watched Australian Football League matches during her time away from tennis over the past year. “It was more enjoying my time at home and being grateful and appreciative for what I have,” she said.Credit…Michael Willson/AFL Photos, via Getty ImagesThen, with Australia’s tennis season on the horizon, she got to work.At first glance it is not obvious what makes Barty so effective. At 5-foot-5, she is built like a soccer midfielder and shorter than many of her elite competitors. She lacks the intimidating, blasting serve that several of the taller players in the top 20 have. She has powerful — though not overpowering — strokes.There are few players who are more fit, though. She can defend every corner of the court on a point and rarely appears to be breathing heavily. On her shoulders and upper arms, her muscles appear to have muscles. She also mixes an unrelenting style with a complex, slicing backhand. She gives away little for free, even when she is aiming for the sidelines, which she does often, and she has a knack for finding an opponent’s weakness and picking it apart.“Her tennis smarts are incredible,” said Daria Gavrilova, who lost to Barty on Thursday and has represented Australia with her on the national team. “Before a tie we always play team analysis, like the opposition analysis, and she’s always spot on. She’s just spot on every time.”After the time away, Barty appears no worse for the lack of wear. She won her tuneup event last week, beating the two-time Grand Slam winner Garbiñe Muguruza in straight sets in the final, then began the Australian Open with a 6-0, 6-0 win.While playing against Gavrilova, Barty wore a wrap around her upper left leg to support a muscle (ever the tactician, she refused to say which one). She insisted that the muscle soreness and the troublesome second set were not concerning or symptoms of rust.“Lost my way a bit,” she said of a rocky portion of the match.She appears to have found it, by following a surprising route, at least for now. She and the other Australians remain caught up in the nation’s remarkable Covid-19 success, which the country will not trifle with.“You have to do what’s best for you and where you’re based and situated throughout the year,” said Lleyton Hewitt, the last Australian to reach No. 1 in the world rankings. “There’s a lot of outside-the-box thinking that has to go on to be an Australian tennis player right now.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Brain Within the Brain of a Rising Tennis Queen

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Brain Within the Brain of a Rising Tennis QueenIga Swiatek of Poland came out of nowhere to win the French Open in October. A sports psychologist was with her all the way.Sports psychologist Daria Abramowicz, right, watches Polish tennis star Iga Swiatek during a hitting practice at Melbourne Park in the week before the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 7, 2021, 1:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — In October, a teenager from Poland, Iga Swiatek, stunned the tennis world when she came out of nowhere to win the French Open.She was ranked No. 54 heading into the tournament yet won the singles championship without losing a set in any of her seven matches. The run instantly made her one of the top young stars in tennis, a celebrity in Poland and a favorite to play deep into the Australian Open, which begins Monday.Swiatek’s unusual breakout — and whatever may follow for the 19-year-old — has come in part because of her unusual strategy of allowing a mental health and psychology coach to play a central role in her training since very early in her career.The coach, Daria Abramowicz, 33, is a former competitive sailor who has spent much of the past decade trying to bring mental health and psychology to the fore in sports in Poland. She has been a constant presence at Swiatek’s matches since 2019 and can often be seen on the court during her practices, watching closely with her arms crossed, trying to peer into Swiatek’s mind.They talk off the court for hours on end about Swiatek’s fears and her dreams. They work to deepen Swiatek’s relationships with relatives and friends, the people who can provide emotional stability — “the human anchor,” Abramowicz calls it.During practice, Swiatek sometimes wears medical instruments that measure her stress level by monitoring the activity of her heart and brain. Ahead of the Australian Open, she watched and reflected on a documentary about Princess Diana to better understand the pitfalls of sudden fame. On Saturday afternoon, two days before her opening match in Melbourne, she went to the beach.“My life changed,” Swiatek, 19, said recently, answering questions from the Melbourne hotel room where she had spent 19 hours each day for two weeks during the limited quarantine required of players because of the coronavirus pandemic. “There is a little bit more pressure.”Many top tennis players consult with mental coaches, but Abramowicz works with Swiatek much more frequently than usual for the sport. Abramowicz also takes a counterintuitive approach of prioritizing gratitude, human relationships and personal growth as a path to winning.At this level, every player has beautiful strokes and athleticism. What often separates the merely great tennis player from the champion, or a one-time Grand Slam champion from a dominating repeat winner, is having the fortitude to prevail on those few key points on which a match turns.“We talk a lot about positive and destructive passions,” Abramowicz said in an interview. “Perfectionism is not so helpful, so we tried to create positive passion, determination and grit. You embrace your potential in pursuit of excellence. You go for the best, but at the end of the day you are human and you have other aspects to your life, and it doesn’t mean when you lose your match you are less worthy as a human being.”Abramowicz said that self-confidence and close relationships built on trust were crucial to supporting attributes like motivation, stress management and communication that drive athletic success.“It is impossible to become a champion when you don’t have a fundamental joy and your needs fulfilled and satisfied as a human being,” Abramowicz said.That may be debatable. Tennis, like other sports, has had plenty of champions who were miserable at times, even when they were on top. Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, who are now married to each other, and more recently Victoria Azarenka, have had plenty of success during unhappy periods in their personal lives. That said, Abramowicz has pushed Swiatek to embrace the idea that she can achieve lasting success far more easily and certainly more enjoyably if she approaches tennis not as life itself but as one part of it.“It is important to have peace so you can focus on working,” Swiatek said. “It is not only true for tennis players but for any person who wants to succeed and is doing extraordinary things.”The tennis court is like the sea.Abramowicz was a prospect in Poland’s sailing program before she studied sports psychology.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesAbramowicz’s journey to Team Swiatek began 15 years ago, when Abramowicz was an 18-year-old rising prospect in Poland’s national sailing program. After a national regatta, Abramowicz fell 10 feet from a trailer while packing a sailboat, shattering her left wrist.After the accident, she could no longer sail competitively and felt empty and alone. But two weeks later, a coach asked if she might serve as an unofficial coach at a regatta in Italy because she had sailed at the venue before..“It lifted me up and showed me the new path,” Abramowicz said.She continued to coach as she studied sports and psychology. As her knowledge deepened, she created a website to write about mental health in sports.By the time Abramowicz earned a postgraduate degree in psychology in 2016, she had a growing reputation in sports in Poland because of her push for athletes to be more open about their mental needs. Then in February 2019, a member of Swiatek’s management team called to ask if she would be interested in working with a still maturing young tennis player with seemingly limitless potential. Swiatek can mash her groundstrokes and execute soft drop volleys off passing shots rocketed her way, but at times she struggled mentally during matches.The pairing was a gamble. What might a sailor know about the rigors of elite tennis? Abramowicz said the two pursuits were strikingly similar.A competitive sailor has to sense the changing conditions of the wind, to see the puffs of water during a race, just as a tennis player must absorb and adjust to the rhythms of a match. During tennis matches and solo sailing races, there is no team to rely on.If you become exhausted or flustered, it is all on you.After the call from Swiatek’s management team, Abramowicz flew to Budapest to watch her next match. As she watched, she saw a competitive fire in Swiatek that she had rarely seen in a young athlete.Afterward, Swiatek told her she was flattered that Abramowicz had come all the way to Hungary to see her play. She knew little about sports psychology beyond the notion that it might make her a better player.Swiatek uses stress tests and sudoku puzzles.Swiatek needed three sets to beat Kaja Juvan in a tuneup tournament before the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesSometimes, before Swiatek takes the court for practices, Abramowicz attaches a heart rate variability sensor to her to measure the tension Swiatek is experiencing during high-stress moments. Other times, she has Swiatek strap on a device that measures brain waive oscillation to detect stress.The goal is to use every tool available to train Swiatek’s mind to manage the adrenaline and pressure of a match. At the 2020 Australian Open, Abramowicz noticed how Swiatek became both calmer and more locked in if she spent the hours before her matches working on homework, especially math.Swiatek graduated from high school last year and does not have homework anymore. So Abramowicz now has her work on crossword puzzles or sudokus as a cognitive warm-up. Other top players often use the same downtime to listen to music or binge-watch television shows.The approach is similar to that of another athlete whom Abramowicz has challenged Swiatek to emulate in many ways: the champion skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who often does word searches before her races to relax and focus her brain. Swiatek tries to watch all of Shiffrin’s races. Abramowicz points to Shiffrin, who became a world champion at 17 and is a huge star in Europe, as a model for how to manage success and expectations without letting fame spiral out of control.Consider this: A year ago, over dinner at the Australian Open, Swiatek told Naomi Osaka, the three-time Grand Slam champion, that she was considering going to college instead of playing professional tennis.“I was telling her she’s really good, and I think she’s going to do really well, so maybe don’t try to divert your energy to college just yet,” Osaka recalled last week.After her championship, the work shifted.Swiatek did not lose a set in the French Open in her run to that title.Credit…Christophe Ena/Associated PressThrough her work with Abramowicz, Swiatek has been changing from a player motivated solely by results — a common trait, especially among young players — into someone who, as she put it, can “be happy even when you are not winning.”That goal morphs over time.As Swiatek played match point at the French Open against Sofia Kenin, Abramowicz tried to figure out where to shift their focus. Ahead of the Australian Open, Abramowicz and Swiatek have been working on managing life as a favorite and an international star.“We have prepared for success,” Abramowicz said.Last week, Swiatek competed in her first tournament since October. Given the layoff, she tried before the tournament to put every expectation for winning out of her mind.“I won against some of the great players,” Swiatek said Saturday. “That can really, like, mess with the head sometimes.”Showing the rust, she needed three sets to defeat Kaja Juvan, a 20-year-old Slovenian, and then lost decisively, 6-4, 6-2, to Ekaterina Alexandrova, the veteran Russian.Now comes the next Grand Slam. Much of Poland is watching closely. As always, Abramowicz will be, too.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More