Why are tennis players being forced to play in Australia’s smoke-choked air?

While Melbourne’s ‘very unhealthy’ air forces residents to stay indoors, the world’s best tennis players are being asked to spend hours outside for the sake of the Australian Open

Australia has been burning for the last four months. Bushfires have ravaged the country, leaving at least 28 people and 1 billion animals dead, with entire towns destroyed.

The fires have also generated a smoke cloud that Nasa believes will circulate the globe and make its way back to Australia in the coming days. Yet while Melbourne’s “very unhealthy” air quality rating forces residents to stay indoors, the world’s best tennis players are being asked to spend up to five hours outside – possibly more – in the name of the Australian Open, which begins next week.

If Tennis Australia officials organising the tournament needed a warning sign larger than the widespread fires themselves, they got one on Tuesday, when players were heavily affected by the poor air conditions. Australian star Bernard Tomic had to take a medical timeout as he struggled to breathe; Maria Sharapova called off her match with Laura Siegemund late in the second set, citing the heavy smoke; while Slovenian Dalila Jakupovic retired from her qualifying match with Stefanie Vogele after she collapsed with a coughing fit. “It was really bad,” Jakupovic later said. “I never experienced something like this. I was really scared I would collapse, because I couldn’t walk any more.”

Tom Larner, Tennis Australia’s chief operating officer, has attempted to play down the threat, explaining that play “will stop if conditions become unsafe based on medical advice, and once those conditions are safe to play, players will get back on court”.

I’m afraid, Mr Larner, that this is nothing more than hot air. Conditions on Tuesday were judged safe to play, yet some of the fittest athletes in the world were struggling to breathe.

Novak Djokovic, the 16-time Grand Slam champion and current president of the Association of Tennis Professionals’ Player Council, has floated the idea of postponing the tournament until it is safe to complete it – a notion that appears to have garnered support from a lot of players after this week’s events.

But given the cost such a postponement would cause, Djokovic’s suggestion unsurprisingly does not have the backing of the organisers. Elite sport is becoming increasingly clouded not just by smoke, but by money. What good is all that money when the world looks on, dumbstruck?

Yours,

Jack de Menezes

Deputy sports editor