Australian Open director Craig Tiley has defended his decision to allow the Venus Williams/Sania Mirza single’s clash to go ahead on Rod Laver Arena on Saturday night, consigning the men to a near midnight start, denying most Australian tennis fans a chance to see one of the most dramatic matches of Lleyton Hewitt’s stellar career.
Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis finally got on court at 11:47pm, with the Australian told at 8.15pm the women’s clash would be postponed, allowing the men to start at 9:00pm. As the pair completed a hurried warm up session, confusion reigned in the Melbourne Park corridors, asRoger Federer’s five-set thriller with Janko Tipsarevic stretched into an eighteen game final set. Despite the further delays, the Williams/Mirza clash was suddenly back on. The decision had been left in the hands of the women, who chose to stay on the centre court.
“Everyone has jumped the gun”, Tiley told Channel Seven.
“There was still an ongoing consultation with Venus Williams and Sania Mirza. It was late for them too. I wanted to give them an opportunity to choose if they wanted to come back the next day.
“They decided they wanted to continue that night, mainly because they have singles and doubles for the rest of the week, They still have a lot of tennis ahead of them,” Tiley said.
There is a silver lining with the obscene match time, with the normally unfriendly Australian time zone suddenly delivering Europe and North America with a quality match in a favourable time slot.
Hewitt will be given the maximum amount of time to recover from the epic, with officials announcing his round of 16 clash with 3rd seed Novak Djokovic will be held in the night session on Monday, with a guaranteed 7:30pm(AEST) start.
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