MELBOURNE, Australia — Two-time Australian Open quarterfinalist Tennys Sandgren has joined a chorus of complaints about the build-up to the year’s first Grand Slam, after he was ousted from the tournament by local hope Alex De Minaur in straight sets.
Sandgren, who held and lost seven match points against Roger Federer in the quarterfinals at the 2020 edition of the Australian Open, was one of more than 70 players forced to undertake a “hard quarantine” after arriving in Australia last month, following a positive COVID-19 test was discovered on their charter flights.
As a result, those in hard lockdown were unable to leave their hotel rooms to practice while those not on those flights, or those who quarantined in Adelaide, were allowed out of their hotels to train once per day, up to five hours, in the lead-up to the Australian summer.
Following his 7-5, 6-1, 6-1 loss to De Minaur, Sandgren said his preparation for the Slam quickly turned into “a joke,” and that missing even a few days of practice was enough to cause an imbalance to the playing field.
“How would you imagine prepping for a hot kind of muggy day, three-out-of-five sets against a player like [23rd seed De Minaur], that caliber, when you can’t play tennis?” Sandgren said.
“You can’t go outside. You can’t. It’s impossible … So I played last week’s event, which probably wasn’t a good idea. It wasn’t hot, it was very mild conditions, and I played two hard three-set matches and I’ve never been more sore in my life after the second round, and I took two days off because I couldn’t walk, and then I hit a couple times before today. I mean, it’s just kind of a joke of preparation. But yeah. What are you going to do?”
When asked how long a player might need to adjust to the conditions and training regimens following a 14-day hard lockdown, the 29-year-old said “maybe 10 days.”
“I lost my calluses, so my hands were blistering playing an hour of tennis today in humid conditions. Like … stupid. So if the weather is similar, then maybe 10 days,” he said.
“But if it’s mild like it was last week and then hot and humid today, I mean, you can’t prepare for that. You just suck it up and do the best you can.”
Sandgren, who tested positive for COVID-19 in November last year, was vocal during the lead-up to the tournament, after he was almost barred from boarding a charter flight to Melbourne from the United States in January.
“My two tests were less than eight weeks apart. I was sick in November, totally healthy now,” Sandgren tweeted at the time. “There’s not a single documented case where I would be contagious at this point. Totally recovered!”
But despite his straight sets loss to De Minaur, Sandgren refused to label the entire tournament as “a joke,” as Frenchman Benoit Paire — who also underwent the hard lockdown — did following his first-round loss.