Tennis
AUSTRALIAN OPEN QUALIFYING STILL DISRUPTED BY POOR AIR
Australian Open qualifying was disrupted for a second successive day due to poor air quality on Wednesday (Jan 15) as smoke from bush fires continued to blanket Melbourne in an acrid haze.
Organisers of the year’s first Grand Slam said practice had been suspended at Melbourne Park until 11am (2pm in Singapore) and qualifiers would not get underway until 1pm.
Australia is experiencing one of its worst bush fire seasons on record, with fires burning for months and claiming the lives of 28 people, destroying more than 2,500 homes and razing forests and farmland the size of Bulgaria.
Qualifying was delayed for more than an hour on Tuesday but organisers were criticised for allowing it to resume, with Slovenia’s Dalila Jakupovic forced to retire after suffering a coughing fit during her match.
“Conditions at Melbourne Park are being constantly monitored and further decisions will be made using the onsite data and in close consultation with our medical team, the Bureau of Meteorology and scientists from EPA Victoria,” governing body Tennis Australia (TA) said in a statement on Wednesday.
Play and practice at regional tournaments in Traralgon and Bendigo, along with a junior event at Royal Park in Melbourne, had also been suspended, it added.
Scheduled horse race meetings in two separate Melbourne suburbs were also cancelled on Wednesday, governing body Racing Victoria said, “due to smoke haze and poor air quality”.
Races in Melbourne’s western suburb of Werribee were scrapped a day earlier.
Air quality is expected to improve later on Wednesday when rain showers are forecast but the weather is likely to cause more delays to the Australian Open schedule, creating further headaches for organisers.
Bush fire smoke has affected a number of elite sporting competitions involving soccer, rugby league and cricket, and the pollution has raised fears for player safety at Melbourne Park, with the tournament starting on Monday.
While TA has said they were consulting experts, Victoria state’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the governing body should establish a proper air quality policy along with its existing extreme heat policy to determine whether conditions are fit for play.
“They do have a heat policy; I think they need to plan an air quality policy in the same way,” he told local media.
“We’re all trying to work out the best approach and there’s no ‘one size fits all’.
“You can’t have a blanket solution, you need to look at the individual circumstances and what the alternatives are for protecting people.”
–Reuters
Argentina’s 36-year-old Marco Trungelliti proved tennis dreams do not come with an expiration date when he became the oldest first-time tour-level finalist in the Open Era after beating the top seed at the Grand Prix Hassan II semi-finals in Marrakech on Saturday.
Trungelliti, who came through the tournament’s qualifiers, upset Italy’s defending champion Luciano Darderi 6-4 7-6(2) to break the previous record held by Victor Estrella Burgos of the Dominican Republic, who reached his first final aged 34 years in 2015.
Darderi, ranked 19 in the world, was only six-years-old when Trungelliti turned pro in 2008. With the victory, Trungelliti secured just his second career top-20 win.
“Of course, I believed it, that’s one of the reasons that I’m here. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be possible,” Trungelliti said in the on-court interview.
“I’ve worked a lot, me and my team and also my wife, my kid. We all believed in breaking the record basically and that’s exactly what we have done now.”
The milestone caps a remarkable journey for Trungelliti, who made his first ATP Tour semi-final in 2018 in Umag, Croatia – 402 weeks ago.
Having entered the tournament ranked 117 in the world, Trungelliti’s breakthrough week has already guaranteed he will crack the top 100 for the first time. He is currently ranked number 75 in the live rankings.
“It’s been happening the whole week, leaving the court with a victory,” added Trungelliti, who has dropped only one set at the tournament. “So hopefully (there) is one more to go.”
He will face Rafael Jodar on Sunday after the Spaniard prevented an all-Argentine final with a 6-2 6-1 victory over Camilo Ugo Carabelli.
-Reuters
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Serena Williams has been listed as eligible to return to tennis by the sport’s drug-testing body (ITIA) as of February 22, though it remains unclear whether the 23-time Grand Slam champion will make a stunning comeback to the women’s tour.
The 44-year-old raised eyebrows late last year after rejoining the tennis anti-doping testing pool, though she denied at the time the move signalled she was preparing to return to the sport she dominated for nearly two decades.
She reignited speculation last month when she deflected questions about a possible return during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.
The Women’s Tennis Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.
Williams, who won her last Grand Slam singles title in 2017, has not competed since the 2022 U.S. Open.
-Reuters
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Serena Williams has re-entered the tennis anti-doping testing pool but the 23-times Grand Slam champion denied on Tuesday that the move had anything to do with her making a return to the sport she dominated for nearly two decades.
The International Tennis Integrity Agency confirmed to Reuters that Williams, who has not competed since the 2022 U.S. Open, was among the list of players in its testing pool, which requires individuals to provide their whereabouts at any given time, every day, and participate in random testing
But as the story of 44-year-old Williams’ inclusion on the list, first reported earlier on Tuesday by The Athletic, gained traction and sparked talk about her potential return, the tennis great took to social media to deny a comeback was in her plans.
“Omg yall I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy,” Williams wrote on X.
Her agent did not immediately respond to an email from Reuters asking why the player had re-entered the testing pool.
Williams’ name appears on the ITIA website’s list of retired players and would be able to return to a sanctioned event after making herself available for out-of-competition testing for at least six months.
Last week former world number one Williams posted a series of photos on Instagram showing herself on a tennis court with her youngest daughter, Adira River, whom she gave birth to in August 2023.
In August 2022, ahead of her final U.S. Open, Williams announced in a Vogue article that she was “evolving away from tennis.”
Williams, who won her last Grand Slam singles title in 2017, had been chasing an elusive 24th crown that would have drawn her level with Australian Margaret Court, who holds the record.
The American came tantalisingly close to achieving that feat, featuring in four major finals since giving birth to her first daughter, Olympia, in 2017.
-Reuters
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