Craig Tiley slams ‘absolutely ridiculous’ call to move Australian Open

The Australian Open boss has blasted a potential solution to what has been a perennial issue for the season-opening grand slam.

Nadal was feeling it. Photo by Martin KEEP / AFP

Australian Open boss Craig Tiley has slammed suggestions the season-opening grand slam should be moved from its traditional January timeslot due to the extreme heat.

January is the hottest month of the year in Melbourne and while the average high temperature is 26 degrees Celsius, often pushes into the 30s and higher.

It led to The Australian’s Julian Linden writing an opinion piece calling for the tournament to be moved to February or October to ease the burden on players.

However, the Tennis Australia and Australian Open boss shut down the idea.

Craig Tiley defended the schedule. Picture: Mark Stewart

“I did read that (News Corp report), I thought it was absolutely ridiculous, a bizarre claim,” Tiley said.

“You talk to every player, this is the season. It starts in January. It starts here in Australia.

“It finishes with Davis Cup late on the men’s side and not as late on the women’s side but I do think it’s a long season. We’ve been talking about that for a long time.

“But Australia is the summer, Australia is January and this event is — from the players’ perspective — one of their favourite places to play.

“They’re coming here earlier, we’re now seeing players here for six weeks, for seven weeks and the preparation for the Australian summer is very normalised. They know what they need to do.”

However, every season players struggle with the extreme heat at the tournament.

Even in 2022, Rafael Nadal defeated Dennis Shapovalov in five-sets over four hours, later revealing he had last 4kg and suffered heat stroke.

The temperatures at the time were 30 degrees in Melbourne but on-court the conditions were sweltering.

Nadal was melting. Photo by Aaron FRANCIS / AFP

In 2018, it was 69 degrees on Rod Laver Arena after the temperatures in Melbourne hit 40C.

The BOM has Monday and Tuesday, the opening two days of the Australian Open for the year, at 30C although it will be partly cloudy and a chance of a shower on both days, although Saturday is forecast to hit 38C.

Linden argued: “Holding the tournament in the hottest part of the Australian summer is simply ludicrous and cannot be allowed to continue.

“It ranks alongside running the Melbourne Cup on a Tuesday afternoon as the dumbest scheduling decisions in all Australian sports.

“It was already a silly idea when it was first proposed in the mid 1980s but has aged so badly it now looks almost inhumane.”

He argued Covid had opened a rare opportunity to change the status quo in the sport as the French Open’s traditional May-June timeslot was shifted to September and October in 2020, while the Australian Open moved into February.

In 2020, a report from the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub called for the event to be moved to a cooler month.

It’s not easy for players — as Maddy Inglis sweats. Photo: Tony Gough /TENNIS AUSTRALIA

The length of the season has been another issue and Alex de Minaur backed the January start to the season to continue, despite the gruelling length of the calendar, which stretches into the ATP and WTA Finals in November.

“You play tournaments throughout the whole year, you finish quite late. That depends on your schedule and everything,” de Minaur said.

“If there was a bit more time for an off-season, I’m sure a lot of players would like that. But at the same time we’re kind of used to it.

“I’ve done it for a couple years where you finish quite late and then you get right into the midst of things.

“There’s times along the year where you can choose to take a little bit of time off and that’s probably the smartest thing to do. So I’ll be looking at that.”