Australian Open policy set to ‘end in tears’ after another failed tournament

The Australian Open has ensured it will remain in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after a controversial policy went unchanged.

Australian Open late night policy set to end in tears. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

COMMENT

Asking people to wait around for a tennis match at an undetermined hour is an act of cruelty, kinda like seeing the driver on your Uber Eats app stuck four minutes away for an hour.

But it’s not as cruel as forcing players and fans to slog it out to revolting hours like 4am when the stadium’s empty and the garbo’s doing the rounds.

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Yes, the Australian Open’s practice of illogical scheduling somehow continues to stand the test of time, a policy where fans are on tenterhooks and matches can finish in front of a handful of officials and a janitor.

Mercifully another all-nighter was averted on Tuesday thanks to Jannik Sinner wrapping up his delayed match over Andrey Rublev in straight sets.

However, the scheduling bungle causing the postponed start saw fans locked out of the night session for almost two hours while awaiting the completion of the afternoon’s main event, which was the Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios 45 minute flirt session following the Serb’s triumph over Taylor Fritz.

It continues tournament organisers’ blind commitment to fluid, round-the-clock scheduling, a system that at its mildest can cause a few bleary eyes in the office, but at its extreme, is a rank hazard that could potentially end in tears.

Sinner and Sabalenka saved the AO from another late night disaster. Photo: Getty Images

What about fans who’ve remortgaged for a ticket? Or if a match goes so long it delays the start of the 2025 tournament?

Or worse, the whole thing gets shifted to Sydney, where everything shuts at 10pm?

And in the fair dinkum department, what about *braces self*… player welfare?

Yes, they are well-paid professionals and should suck it up, but it’s hard to deny the stress placed on a tennis player’s body of playing until the wee hours, especially in a fortnight where they’ve had their energy sapped by marathon matches and interviews with Jim Courier.

As they say in local footy circles, nothing good happens when players are out after 1am.

While in Melbourne this usually refers to blokes harassing staff with chopsticks or waking up shirtless outside Crown, it’s a rule that still rings true inside the tram lines of tennis proper.

A player wrapping up a match at 3:30am does not simply zip up the Yonex and sleep until midday like most of us returning home from a godless bender.

At Melbourne Park, they still need to take a massage and an ice bath, then fulfill their obligations of talking to the press and getting photographed with a Sherrin before returning to the hotel to hopefully fall to sleep before breakfast.

I’ll just grab a quick nap. (Photo by Hu Jingchen/Xinhua via Getty Images)

While the ATP and WTA have legislated against late starts to avoid these situations, the Australian Open has stuck solid with its finish-at-all-costs policy, resulting in the tournament recording the four latest finishes in Grand Slam history.

These include last year’s 4am slugfest between Thanasi Kokkinakis and Andy Murray, the harrowing five-set epic between Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis in 2008, and this year’s ridiculous battle between Daniil Medvedev and Emil Ruusuvuori where the fifth set didn’t start until 3:20am.

While reports are the Medvedev match is still being played, we still have time to save the rest.

Surely tournament organisers can introduce a curfew or a shot clock or even just a modicum of flexibility, if only for games stretching to the most ungodliest of hours.

Or even to assist the fan experience, start matches earlier in the morning to prevent any need later for No-Doz and a swag.

Yes, the length of a tennis match is imperfect, with the variables of rallies, tanking, toilet breaks and Nine teasing the new season of Tipping Point meaning a match duration can range anywhere from Seinfeld to Dances with Wolves.

Weird things happen after 1am. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Add participants selfishly doing anything to win, and finding a one-size-fits-all policy is a problem for bigger brains than ours.

One thing that can be assured though is this:

Administrators will always respect the wishes of the sport’s most important stakeholder: the broadcasters.

Australian Open boss Craig Tiley claimed the tournament’s newlook early start on Sunday would hopefully stretch the schedule to prevent these late-night extremes.

But with the agreeable time difference for overseas markets, he won’t lose any sleep if he’s forced to lose sleep.

– Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Originally published as Australian Open policy set to ‘end in tears’ after another failed tournament