Tennis players in inequality

This Monday, January 18, he was to have started the Australian Open on their original dates, but the pandemic forced a delay of three weeks, along with a series of mandatory preventive measures for tennis players. Instead of starting the tournament, the players are this week distributed in hotels where they must spend a 14-day quarantine. The agreement with the organizer and the authorities allows them to go out five hours a day to dedicate exclusively to their preparation. Those are the conditions, and those who have not accepted them, like Roger Federer and John Isner, they have stayed at home. The solution, which combines local laws with the minimum needs of the tennis player, was the best for save the grand slam against the push of the virus. The alternative was to cancel it.

The stage allows players to comply with the rule without losing shape, and above all on an equal footing. No one will come with an advantage, not even the members of the elite bubble that has organized itself in Adelaide with the first rackets in the ranking, who enjoy greater peace in their privileged isolation, but with the same activity hours as his rivals from Melbourne. The balance, however, has been broken in the first days of quarantine by some unexpected events: the positives detected in three of the 15 official flights. Australia has decreed total confinement, without the possibility of training, for the 72 tennis players who traveled in those planes, including the Spanish Paula Badosa, Carlos Alcaraz and Mario Vilella. The complaints of those affected sound with phrases such as “all work overboard.” And the word “boycott” also circulates if a way out is not figured out. Novak Djokovic He has proposed some to the tournament management how to move them to private houses with courts. Something will have to be done. Without threatening health, of course, but also to safeguard the fairness of the competition.