Simona Halep won’t play Australian Open if new restrictions are imposed

The current Covid-19 pandemic situation around the world is pretty volatile. In some parts of the world, the pandemic seems to be receding, while in others it’s flaring up again.

It’s like a game of online roulette where you blindly place your bets on random numbers—but without the fun. Roulette actually seems even more predictable than the current situation. At least when you play it, you know the risks. The same cannot be said about the state of the pandemic around the world. Things can change from one day to another, and these changes can have surprising consequences.

Following her first-round win at the U.S. Open, Romanian tennis star Simona Halep made a surprising announcement: her participation in the 2022 Australian Open depends exclusively on the severity of restrictions imposed by the local authorities.

Halep’s history Down Under

Halep has a long history with the Australian Open. It was the tournament where she won her first-ever Grand Slam matches in 2011, beating Anne Kremer and No. 23 Alisa Kleybanova to reach the third round. Her first major quarterfinal appearance also came Down Under (2014). In 2018 she defeated Lauren Davies in a marathon match that lasted three hours and 45 minutes, the third-longest women’s singles match ever at the Australian Open. It was worth it; she finished the tournament as runner-up, losing to then-No. 2 Caroline Wozniacki.

Halep is yet to cross out the Australian Open from her list of Grand Slam titles and it seems that—if the Australian authorities do enforce the strict restrictions that they are planning—she won’t try next year.

“It’s too much”

“If there will once again be a strict quarantine, I think, not many players will come,” she said during her aforementioned U.S. Open interview. “For me, it will be hard to go knowing that I may get unlucky on the plane and come in contact with a person who tests positive. If I have to quarantine, it’s too much.”

State of disaster

These declarations come amidst the strictest restrictions imposed in Melbourne so far after the local authorities declared a “state of disaster” in late August. The widening coronavirus outbreak in the city has triggered measures such as an overnight curfew in the next six weeks, a ban on wedding gatherings, online classes in schools, and restrictions on leaving home (only one person is allowed to go out once a day outside of curfew hours, and they must stay within 3.1 miles of their homes). Non-essential industries in the area have also been shuttered.

Victoria sports minister Martin Pakula has, in turn, expressed his confidence in the first Grand Slam of 2022 taking place at Melbourne Park in the second half of January. The restrictions applied to vaccinated players will not be that harsh; they will face fewer restrictions than their unvaccinated counterparts, even though no clear restrictions and rules for international players have been announced so far.

“What I’m very clear on, what I’m very sure about, is that the rules for unvaccinated players and the rules for vaccinated players, I’m quite confident will be very different,” Pakula told a local radio station. “We’ll provide clarity for the ATP and the WTA very shortly, but I think they can be very confident that being vaccinated will be a wise thing for them to do before they seek to come to Australia.”