MELBOURNE, Australia – It was late December and Craig Tiley was feeling good. After months of negotiations with government officials and the best tennis players in the world, Tiley, the head of Tennis Australia, finally got the green light to organize the Australian Open amid the pandemic.
Health officials and government leaders came up with the idea of more than 1,000 people arriving from abroad, including hundreds of players who would have privileges during the 14-day quarantine period that Australian citizens could not. And the players agreed to spend nearly the entire day in their hotel rooms for two weeks and to limit their practice time on the court to just two hours a day.
“The players are being great,” said Tiley of the deal for a limited quarantine period. “They realized that if they didn’t want to do that, there would be no Australian Open, no leadership events and no chance of $ 83 million in prize money.”
A month later, Tiley, a South African native and former college coach in the United States, is at the center of growing anger on all sides after six people on three chartered flights tested positive for coronavirus on their arrival in Melbourne .
Positive tests irritated citizens, some of whom complained that Tennis Australia was putting residents at risk to placate millionaire tennis players. Victoria’s head of health took action, ordering everyone on the chartered planes, including 72 players who should be able to practice and spend time at the tennis center’s gym, to stay in their hotel rooms for 14 days, though none of the players have tested positive.
Then came a report that the best-ranked male player, Novak Djokovic, the leader of a nascent players’ association, made a number of demands, including reducing the isolation period for players who continued to test negative and move the maximum. of players possible to private homes with tennis courts to facilitate training. Health officials quickly rejected them.
“We were hit by the flights and the challenges,” Tiley said Monday afternoon during a conference call with some of the quarantined people. “I had nowhere to hide.”
In a matter of days, Tiley went from one of the most visible cheerleaders in Australian sport to his main punching bag, while his organization’s signing tournament turned from a potential celebration in the rare corner of the world where the virus was kept in check. yet another symbol of the virus’s uncertainty.
In the past 48 hours, government officials, including members of parliament and Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, went on television and attacked the decision to prioritize tennis over what they believed to be more essential needs, such as bringing in seasonal workers, facilitating state border restrictions or allowing some 40,000 Australians to return from abroad. They cannot, in part, due to the strict limits on daily international arrivals.
The limits remain, although Australia has long since closed one of the most rigid virus-related blocks in the world. In Melbourne, police carried out a nearly four-month attack on the virus. During that time, schools and businesses were closed and residents were allowed to go out for just an hour (and then two) a day, to exercise, go to the supermarket or pharmacy. They also had to stay less than three miles from home, unless they had a license.
The rigid approach worked. Australia has one of the lowest per capita rates of infection among major countries.
When the blockade was lifted, Tiley spent months struggling to get special privileges for tennis players that he said were essential to saving the tournament. He pushed to keep the championship as close as possible to the traditional beginning of mid-January, instead of transferring it to another country or postponing it until December, when vaccines should be more widely available.
He promised to spend millions to charter planes and cover the costs of a limited quarantine of incoming players, plus a complete quarantine for most of the rest of the more than 1,200 people who will come to the Australian Open, which is scheduled to start in February 8, and three adjustment events.
In an interview in late December, Tiley said there was no guarantee that life would be more normal in December 2021. “Is it risky now? Yes, but it can be just as risky in December, ”he said.
The immediate risks became evident soon after the players started arriving late last week. First, there was news on Saturday that a flight attendant and another passenger tested positive on a flight from Los Angeles (a third person later tested positive). Then Tiley announced that a passenger on an Abu Dhabi plane – Sylvain Bruneau, coach of Bianca Andreescu, 2019 U.S. Open champion, acknowledged it was him – had tested positive. On Sunday, it was someone, again not a player, from the Doha plane, and one from the Abu Dhabi flight.
More than 70 players who chose to come to Australia on the assumption that they would be able to train, provided the test was negative, were forced to stay in their hotel rooms for two weeks. Many resorted to social media to complain. Some asked to leave the country immediately and were told they could not.
Daniel Andrews, Victoria’s prime minister, rejected such moves. “People are free to provide lists of demands, but the answer is no,” Andrews told reporters. “There is no special treatment here.”
Tiley denied players’ complaints that Tennis Australia had not warned them of the potential for a strict quarantine without access to tennis courts.
He said there were weekly calls for four months with members of the player boards for professional male and female tournaments, during which he made it clear that Australia had a mandatory 14-day quarantine requirement for anyone who had close contact with someone who had tested positive.
“I reminded them that it would always be a risk,” Tiley said during a conference call on Monday. “Even now,” he said, “if there is a major outbreak, Victoria’s health commissioner may decide next week that no player can practice during the quarantine.”
Monday brought further complications, as officers unexpectedly canceled all training at Melbourne Park until 3:30 pm, because they were unable to safely coordinate the arrival of so many people by the end of the day.
Daria Abramowicz, the sports psychologist of the French Open women’s champion in 2020, Iga Swiatek, who missed her training session on Monday, said all the uncertainty is testing the players’ nerves.
“The information gives a sense of security and stability,” she said. “Everyone needs the tuning tools now.”
Tiley promised to do everything he could to make players more comfortable, with additional food and exercise equipment. He said officials are examining the competition schedule set to begin on January 31 to find adjustments that can be made to help players who cannot practice for two weeks, other than throwing balls against the walls of their hotel rooms. .
“It is not a good situation,” he said. “You are stuck in your room for a period of 14 days.”