Walkovers and angry walks

The US Open. Often a scene of chaos and craziness. Sadly, for supporters of Australian tennis we seem caught in a static, predictable state. How many times in the last decade have we heard “there are three Australians through to the fourth round of the US Open and, a day later, “Alex De Minaur is the last Australian player in contention in New York.” And so, it is again in 2025.

For Australia’s devotees of F1 racing, there is much more positive news with Oscar Piastri regularly winning Grand Prix races, most recently in The Netherlands.  He is  en route to being Australia’s first Formula One World Champion since Alan Jones in 1980.

Australia has not had a Men’s Champion at the US Open since Lleyton Hewitt in 2001. Samantha Stosur won the title in 2011 to be Australia’s only female champion since Margaret Court in 1973. Mind you, America is not that much better off. America’s last Men’s Champion was Andy Roddick in 2003. This year it is down to Taylor Fritz . Last year’s finalist, Fritz has to first beat Djokovic in their quarter-final.  In the Women’s draw, America still has Gauff, Pegula and Anisimova to fly the flag.

de Minaur’s chance to advance to his third US Open quarter-final has occurred in a bizarre manner. He won his third round match by a walkover as did his fourth round opponent, Swiss Leandro Riedi. As thin and as lanky his surname suggests, Reidi must rank as the most unlikely fourth round competitor in Grand Slam history. He is ranked No. 435 in the world and has a 3-10 career record in singles.

Has there ever been a fourth round fixture at a Grand Slam tournament where both players have progressed courtesy of the withdrawal of their opponents?

Walking over and around our Australian cities also used to be a safe and predictable exercise. Regrettably, it seems this is no longer the case. Last Sunday saw nationwide clashes between protests; one championing the cause for a Palestinian state, the other advocating severe restrictions on our immigration levels. When the right to protest becomes an orchestrated theatre for deliberate confrontation, everyone loses.

Once again, social discourse is seen to be increasingly shrill and superficial. Tags, labels and images are repeatedly generated by an array of vested interests at the expense of any considered opinion.  You are either a climate change lover or a heretical climate change denier. You either favour the creation of a Palestinian state or you are complicit in Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. You either support multiculturalism or you an atavistic white supremacist.  You either support diversity, equality or inclusion or you are transphobic and/or homophobic.

When a tennis match is played,  the aims of the players are intrinsically opposed. However, at conflict’s end the time-honoured shaking of hands at the net indicates that the ability of a player to contest fairly and respectfully against another is as important as the outcome of the match.

Or so we thought. This year’s US Open may well be remembered for two outbursts that indicated that the self-restraint required for sporting play and sane social dialogue is fast becoming evanescent.  Both outbursts were from players who should know better.

First, there was Daniil Medvedev, champion in New York in 2021 and runner up in 2019 and 2023, who harassed an umpire who awarded a fresh first serve to his first round opponent, Benjamin Bonzi, when Bonzi served for the match in straight sets after a photographer aimlessly wandered across the court. Bonzi prevailed to win the match in five sets after which Medvedev, without a hint of restraint wilfully smashed his racquet. 

Then there was Jelena Ostapenko, whose first tournament win was the French Open in 2017. Following her surprise loss to American Doubles specialist Taylor Townsend, Ostapenko confronted her opponent courtside. Ostapenko told Townsend that “she had no class and no education” and, more concerningly, “you wait and see what happens when you go outside.” For Townsend, the trauma of the tournament was made worse when she squandered eight match points against former French and Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova in their fourth-round match.

Of all the people in the world who have no right to demonstrate such petulance, it is tennis players, who with Grand Slam pedigrees have earned prizemoney that others can only dream of.

Has the competition to be ‘a voice that is heard’ become so difficult in the age of social media that only shocking and/or egregious behaviour is considered newsworthy?

Certainly, the conspicuously evil influence of Iran in Australian domestic politics has motivated the government to accept that  Iran is a state committed to the destruction of liberal democracies. Conclusive evidence that Iran’s Australian ambassador was involved in planning the antisemitic attacks on a Melbourne synagogue and a Sydney led to his expulsion. Needless to say in this bizarre world, there were those willing to describe such allegations as a Zionist plot.  Just as there were people insisting over the weekend that President Trump had died because he had not been seen in public for three days. How short the public memory is! Towards the end of his tenure the wax like Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was only ever seen at annual May Day marches.

If the US Open has been an event of walkovers and tantrums, it has also confirmed that the time has come for many to consider walking away from the game before their loss of dignity becomes too great. Petra Kvitova has accepted her time has come. Obviously, Medvedev tops the list that should do likewise followed closely by Marin Cilic, Gail Monfils, Victoria Azarenka, Danielle Collins, and Venus Williams.

Even in the uniquely bizarre world we seem to have created no one beats Mother Nature, even though Djokovic will be the last one trying!