Absurd Australian Open qualification: The bitterest break of the young tennis year

Absurd Australian Open qualification
The bitterest break of the young tennis year

Qualification for the first major event of the tennis year is underway. But instead of in Australia, the professionals are fighting their way through qualifying for the Australian Open in Asia. There a player gets a break at absolutely inopportune time. That causes trouble and costs a lot of money. It just came too early.

Denis Kudla saw himself one step further on the long way to Melbourne. Now one more break, then it would be done. And indeed: The 28-year-old tennis professional from the USA, number 114 in the world rankings, clearly won his qualifying match against the Moroccan Elliot Benchetrit 6: 4, 6: 3. The native Ukrainian will still not be able to travel to the Australian Open. He had to be quarantined immediately after his Pyrrhic victory. Corona.

The virus leads to absurd cases in the tennis circus even before the first Grand Slam of the year (from February 8th), because: Kudla only found out when the score was 5: 3 in the second sentence that his test had yielded a positive result. He was still allowed to play the following game. And because he managed to break to victory, Benchetrit now has no chance of making it to the Australian Open. Had he managed to serve to 4: 5, the match would have been canceled in his favor – and the Moroccan would have been in the second round. In addition to the chance to move into the main draw, Benchetrit also loses a lot of money due to the break at the wrong time: Each player collects around 22,000 dollars for the move into the second qualifying round.

The qualification tournament, so much has to be mentioned, takes place in the Qatari capital Doha due to the strict hygiene rules in Australia. And it doesn't seem to be working particularly well with testing the players there. For example, the German professional Dustin Brown complained that the results were not available in time for the first matches. The waiting time was given to the players as 8 to 14 hours, he said, "that was not the case in most cases". He had to wait 26 hours for his findings.

Five hours of outdoor activity per day

The obviously frustrated Benchetrit, number 211 in the ATP ranking, also attacked the testers. Before the trip to Doha, every player had to submit a negative test, and a smear was taken after arriving in Qatar, he told the Tennis Majors portal and suspected that Kudla was infected in the hotel, where employees allegedly used the same elevator Player. Francisco Cerundolo (Argentina) also tested positive – the result was at least before his match against Mario Vilella Martinez (Spain).

In order to be able to comply with the extremely strict Corona rules in Australia, the qualifying tournaments take place in Doha (men) and Dubai (women). From there and other locations, the players and coaches will be flown to Melbourne at the expense of Tennis Australia. Tournament director Craig Tiley said the organizers of the Australian Open had booked 1,270 seats on 18 charter flights to get the participants down under. On site, the players must first be quarantined for 14 days. Only five hours of outdoor training are allowed per day. It takes a "little miracle" for everything to go smoothly, Tiley told the tennis channel, "but we're trying."

. (tagsToTranslate) Sport (t) Tennis (t) Grand Slam tournaments (t) Australian Open