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MELBOURNE - Australian Open organisers have defended the tournament's extreme heat policy after confusion reigned among players yesterday about when the court roof would be closed for matches.
On a day in which the temperature topped 40degC in Melbourne, the Rod Laver Arena roof was left open for the first match between Russia's Elena Dementieva and Spain's Carla Suarez Navarro.
While Dementieva was unhappy to be left baking in the sun, compatriot Svetlana Kuznetsova was furious the roof was shut midway through her match against American Serena Williams, which followed.
Tournament director Craig Tiley said the heat policy, first introduced in 2003, was a work in progress, but defended the decisions both to leave the roof open early in the day, then to make a mid-match change.
Tiley said Open organisers, anxious to maintain the event's tradition as an outdoor tournament, had a policy of not shutting the roof until it was deemed necessary, even if that meant altering conditions between or during matches.
"We cannot make a decision on a forecast," Tiley said.
"If we had yesterday, for example, the forecast was to be in this (extreme heat) condition, if we had made the decision yesterday on the forecast to close the roof, we would have been wrong."
Tiley said the main figure used in deciding when to invoke the extreme heat policy was the Wet Bulb Globe measure, which research indicated best showed the level at which players could be both safe and play at their optimum.
He said there was always likely to be differences of opinions among players, but organisers valued their feedback.
"There's some players that say `Absolutely, we've trained for these conditions, been in the heat for five or six weeks before coming to Australia, we want to play in those conditions,"' he said.
"Other players say `no, actually we don't want to play in those conditions,' because they may not have gone through the same training procedure.
"These are all factors to be considered. To be fair to all the players, we set a standard and we will adhere to that."
But Tiley said the mixed reaction of players on Wednesday suggested they might need to better inform them of how the policy worked.
"That's something we need to go back and look at and make sure we get the assistance of the tours in educating the players," he said.
- AAP