At the Australian Open, Sports Flirts With Normalcy

The players had to endure varying degrees of quarantines for two weeks after they arrived, and 72 of them were forced to remain inside their hotel rooms for 14 days after 10 people on three chartered flights tested positive upon arrival. Then they were set free, and after a week of preparation, Monday delivered its payoff.

“Definitely nice to have some people, a lot of people out there,” said Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion, after she tore through Laura Siegemund of Germany, 6-1, 6-1.

With spectators capped at 30,000 per day, about half that would show up in normal times, Day 1 at Melbourne Park was a far cry from the summer festival that this tournament is supposed to be. Just 17,922 fans showed up, with plenty of tickets going unsold for any number of reasons — weather, a rejiggered schedule that pushed the tournament back three weeks, Aussie kids no longer on summer break, anger that tennis players, tournament officials and international media members got special exemptions to enter the country and brought in new cases of Covid-19.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/sports/australian-open-sports-covid-coronavirus.html