“10s Whenever” Newsletter Vol. 109

Written by: Staff on 19th January 2014

"10s Whenever" Newsletter Vol. 109

epa04020666 Maria Sharapova of Russia cools down with an ice pack during her first round match against Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the US at the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 14 January 2014. Sharapova won the match. EPA/FRANCK ROBICHON |

It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity

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Today’s article in the NY Times–It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity–puts the question of how to handle the heat in Australia into a very clear perspective. Among other things, the author cites the comments from “the” AO medical officer about how man is descended from ancestors who chased game across the burning plains in Africa for miles and miles. The assumption being that this makes having players hit tennis balls for hours and hours in 100+ degree heat OK. And spectators too can sit in the sunshine and heat for hours and hours…no problem, just ask our ancestors.

What are the real issues here? Why did this happen? Can it happen again?

I pointed out in my article–Baked Australia–that players and their assorted handlers apparently have little idea about what to wear in the heat. The players–many of them wealthy, powerful people–apparently were too timid to stand up and say “No”! the tournament officials were not inclined to mess with thousands of tickets sold, TV time contracted for and everything else–merely for the safety of a few hundred overpaid, over indulged athletes. And no one cared for the spectators at all–let them faint! Let them faint as in Let Them Eat Cake if they don’t have bread….

Now imagine this. Suppose you worked in an office or factory where it was often pretty warm–sometimes the temperature got up to 100 degrees or more for a day or so. And one day you came to work and it was 110+ degrees and it stayed that way for a week. What would you do? Leave? Protest? Strike? I probably would, but the tennis players chose not to. While many fainted, became ill, hallucinated, cramped or otherwise suffered, overall, they were willing to risk whatever might happen to stay at their jobs and play on. A few made slightly critical comments, but basically they accepted playing in the heat as their fate and their duty and played through it.

And what if someone had dropped dead? That would have probably put things in a different light.

I suggest that the AO should have been delayed for 4 days–only playing matches indoors to give some ticket buyers their tennis and TV their due–and extending the tournament for 4 days to finish outdoors when the weather returned to what passes for normal down under. I suggest that this would have been humane, sensible, logical, honest, realistic, healthy and wise. I suggest that what was done was–well, “stupid” as in It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity. Yes, I wish I had written that headline!

With Global Warming as a factor we may have to deal with for, say, the next 100 years, I suggest that the Tennis Establishment think pretty carefully about this so that next time–and there will be a next time–they are prepared. What happened in Australia embarrasses me as a member of the tennis community. I wish we would have done better by our players and by our fans. We appear to have escaped disaster this time, but next time it may be different. Be prepared!

A Guardian of Tennis