Australian Open: beating the heat in Melbourne furnace

I can’t blame conditions for my double faults. You have to take into consideration different angles before making a big call like that.

“I’m off to have an ice bath”, was all he managed to say after the marathon match.

“Protecting our players and the fairness of the competition is paramount in these conditions, which we acknowledge can be challenging”, tournament director Craig Tiley said in the statement, adding that all policies are reexamined on a regular basis. For sure, I’m very grateful for that.

As I said, it’s nothing major to be concerned about.

“At the end of every Australian Open we always review our policies and procedures and consult with all stakeholders”. I guess it’s normal. It’s bigger when a sport creates a lot of jobs.

I deal with it.

Federer’s Swiss colleague, Stan Wawrinka, also had the benefit of an evening match but the 2014 champion was beaten 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 by the American Tennys Sandgren in the final match in Margaret Court Arena. Give us some of the things you reflected on.

“Men’s tennis is picking up (in China) as well”, he said.

“It’s awesome. It’s only the second time in my career I’ve come back from two sets down and especially in this very hot weather it was tough”, Thiem said after the match. Yeah, I think it was the hardest I have.

Djokovic regularly used a disguised drop shot to break up the baseline battle, toying with Ramos-Vinolas at times. He makes you earn it. Monfils, one of the sport’s characters, said, “At one stage I said to the chair umpire that the 25-second rule, there’s no need. I expect it to be tough again”. At times I don’t like that. “If you look at the revenue, the sharing process, it’s not quite where it’s supposed to be”.

Home hope Nick Kyrgios, Grigor Dimitrov, Caroline Wozniacki and Elina Svitolina progressed to the last 16 but Jelena Ostapenko was upset, while Andreas Seppi and Kyle Edmund – opponents in the next round – defied the heat to win five setters.

“He (Chung) is playing great”.

Meanwhile, those outside the gilded top 100 live on the breadline, touring the game’s backwaters for the tiny cheques that will keep their dream chugging along for one more week. You kind of work and train hard to be able to sustain these kind of conditions, to be tough.

Roger Federer beat former Brit Aljaz Bedene, meaning that the formidable trio of Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic reached the second round for the loss of just 20 games between them. “So let’s see what happens”. ‘The professionalism of players.

I think that’s why the quality of tennis is higher today than it was maybe 12, 13 years ago. “Also, if you saw the crowds, nobody was there watching under the sun”.

After two days of searing heat, temperatures are forecast to a much more manageable 26 Celsius (79 Farenheit) on day six of the opening Grand Slam of the year.

He was happy to talk about that later, less so the annual ATP player meeting of last Friday, where he unexpectedly asked tour officials to leave the room so he could lead players to discuss what he described as “certain topics”. The 21-year-old Khachanov is a player for the future, but the 29-year-old De Potro, who has fought for three years to get back to this position, is a player for now. Just not as well as us.