Heat a hot topic for Australian Open organisers

A leading heat expert has warned organisers of the Australian Open that they need to change their policies on playing in extreme heat to protect tennis players.

Experts ask Australian Open organisers to review heat policy. Image by Steve Collis / CC BY 2.0

Melbourne’s Australian Open, one of the largest Grand Slam tennis tournaments in the world, is held in January each year during the height of the Australian summer. High temperatures in recent years have proven challenging for players and fans, and with the 2016 summer set to be a scorcher, the organisation’s extreme heat policies are under increasing scrutiny.

The organisation introduced its current policy in 2014 following a particularly hot season in which players endured three days of over 40˚C. Some hallucinated, some vomited and others fainted while playing in the extreme conditions, prompting outcry from players and fans alike. In response, organisers of the event introduced the current extreme heat policy, in which the referee can suspend play at the end of a set when temperatures reach 40˚C and the Wet Bulb Global Temperature (WBGT) reaches 32.5˚C.

But Australia’s National University’s Liz Hanna says the current policy doesn’t go far enough to protect players. “Their [tennis players] bodies are the instruments of their trade,” Dr Hanna said. “When we do get those days around 40, it really is inappropriate to expect them to play. If we want to be really fair and actually test performance and not simply heat endurance, those days should be postponed.”

Long-range forecasts indicate there will be three days above 35˚C during the tournament, with the majority of days in low to mid-20s, though anyone who has visited Melbourne will take long-range (and indeed daily) forecasts with a grain of salt. The city’s weather has famously been described as having ‘four seasons in one day’.

Superstars Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Eugenie Bouchard and Juan Martin del Potro have all comfirmed they will be playing in the 2016 tournament. For information and tickets, visit ausopen.com.