Complaints about on-court interviewers blur the line about how precious tennis players can be

The post-match interviews at the Aus Open have stolen the headlines from Melbourne’s heat, but even if they are tiresome at times, players just have to suck it up, writes Scott Gullan.

Please, no more coffee questions.

The post-match interviews at the Australian Open have taken over the hot weather as the major talking point off the court this year.

Normally we’re banging on about wet bulb meters and have players and ball kids fainting all over the place.

Not this year, instead the heat is on the interaction between players and interviewers after matches.

Novak Djokovic thrust the old post-match chat into the spotlight when he didn’t do it, snubbing Jim Courier as a protest against the host broadcaster Ch 9.

Now young American Ben Shelton has thrown some shade on the practice, describing the interviewers at this year’s Open as disrespectful and embarrassing.

Novak Djokovic’s on-court interview snub ignited the Open. Picture: Michael Klein

Asking every player if Melbourne has the best coffee is clichéd and tiresome but we get there is a need for topics away from tennis although there should be a better balance.

Don’t forget the players have just played some amazing tennis for the previous two or three hours so finding out how they conjured up the win isn’t a bad topic to explore.

Jelena Dokic skated a fine line in an interview with Madison Keys. She quickly glossed over the fact Key had just beaten Australia’s No. 1 enemy Danielle Collins and instead focused on her recent marriage.

Keys played along explaining she’d married her coach who when the camera panned over looked less than impressed with the line of questioning.

An earlier night Dokic got defending champion Aryna Sabalenka dancing which was a bit of fun for everyone, particularly the fans.

But when does it cross over the too cringey line?

Shelton thinks we’ve streeted past it a number of times. He had to deal with a bad one from Roger Rasheed – Lleyton Hewitt’s former coach – who bumbled his way through trying to point out that Gael Monfils, who he’d just defeated, was old enough to be his father.

“Is that a black joke?” Shelton said.

Then after his quarter-final victory over Lorenzo Sonego, the 22-year-old wasn’t impressed with the interviewer James Sherry immediately turned mood negative: “You’re going to play either Jannik Sinner or Alex de Minaur — the crowd are going to be on the other guy’s side for that, aren’t they?”

Shelton laughed nervously, and tried to play along, but it was still eating at him an hour later which led to his unprompted sermon on the state of the tennis interviews.

On both of these occasions the interviewers were working for the Tennis Australia world feed while Ch 9 provides the talent for the bigger games and there is no-one better in the business than Courier.

His post-match chats have become part of the whole event, the players clearly enjoy them and the crowd and viewers eagerly await them.

There is a trust there with Courier from the players and he has a good handle on his cringe metre even though the American doesn’t shy away from tackling off-field issues and throwing some humour in.

While Shelton is probably on the money, whinging about this sort of stuff is also blurring the line regarding how precious tennis players can be. They are some of the most pampered athletes in world sport – yes there are the battlers stories like in all sports – and life at a grand slam is pretty damn fine.

So if you have to deal with a couple of weird, probably lame, questions, maybe suck it up.

Originally published as Complaints about on-court interviewers blur the line about how precious tennis players can be