Hotel quarantine has impacted tennis player performance?

The lead-in to the Australian Open was dominated by quarantine. The domestic debate concerned the appropriateness of importing hundreds of players and officials, each at risk of bringing with them Covid-19 into a country that had gone to great pains to all-but eliminate the virus from its shores. But within the tennis community the focus was on the competitive imbalance brought about by the tiers of quarantine.

A handful of stars were treated to a fortnight of quarantine lite in South Australia, where they were able to work on their games and reacclimatise to the presence of crowds courtside. 

The majority of the draw went through a standardised quarantine in hotels in Victoria, which allowed for some practice opportunities at Melbourne Park.

But 72 competitors were on flights containing a confirmed active case of Covid-19, and so were forced to endure quarantine max, unable to leave their rooms for over a fortnight.

But has it compromised the draws? With the caveat that anything can happen in professional sport, on the men’s side, it probably hasn’t proven significant. A good chunk of the men in hard quarantine were long shots who found themselves on the contaminated flight because it was ferrying low ranked qualifiers to Australia from Doha, the makeshift venue for the preliminary rounds.

The women’s draw offers more grounds for contention with a much greater number of title challengers on affected flights. But again this is undercut by the sheer volatility of the women’s game.