What Bautista Agut and several of his fellow-players seemed to have little idea about was what constituted an actual disaster. “The control of everything isn’t Tennis Australia,” he added, referring to the organization that hosts the Australian Open. (Bautista Agut later claimed that he believed he was speaking privately.) “These people have no idea about tennis and about practice courts, and it’s a complete disaster,” Bautista Agut said. Nor did the public take it well when a video of the Spanish player Roberto Bautista Agut calling quarantine a prison “but with Wi-Fi” was aired on television. Editorials jeered Djokovic after the contents of a letter in which he made requests on behalf of the seventy-two players in hard lockdown-including looser quarantine restrictions, better food, and, when possible, the use of private houses with tennis courts-were leaked. No one wants to be trapped in a room with a rodent.īut whatever good will Putintseva garnered from the Australian public disappeared when she posted a picture of herself holding up a sign that read “We need fresh air to breathe,” perhaps not the most sympathy-inducing message during a pandemic in which people are literally dying because they cannot breathe. And one player, Yulia Putintseva, had a truly legitimate concern: a mouse. A few pictures on social media of their setup in Adelaide had spurred so much envy among those in Melbourne that, reportedly, the Adelaide players were quietly encouraged not to post anything else. And a handful of the top players-including Rafael Nadal, Naomi Osaka, Novak Djokovic, and Serena Williams-were flown to Adelaide, where they reportedly were quartered in nicer accommodations, were allowed to bring larger teams, and trained under better conditions. Health officials ruled all the planes’ passengers as close contacts, ordering them to isolate for fourteen days, while other players were allowed outside their rooms for up to five hours, split between training on court and in a gym. And some of them, including a few players with legitimate title hopes, were facing serious bad luck: seventy-two players had flown to Melbourne aboard planes on which people had tested positive for COVID-19 upon landing. They had reasons to complain: in a few weeks’ time, the players would be competing for two, three, even four hours at a time, potentially in extreme heat-not an easy task even for athletes in peak form, let alone ones who have been trying to simulate hundred-and-fifteen-mile-an-hour serves by volleying with a window. Read The New Yorker’s complete news coverage and analysis of the coronavirus pandemic.
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