Aussie Open: Players shock organisers with bizarre requests

This year’s Aussie Open the first Grand Slam of the year serves off on February 8.

Preparation has been multi-dimensional taking into consideration the coronavirus migraine.

Players had to quarantine for two weeks before being allowed to step out and of course observe the now popular social distancing (SD).

In the course of the quarantine players made some bizarre requests such as insisting on having their pets with them in lockdown.

Tournament chief Craig Tiley spent months organising bringing more than 1,000 players and support staff safely into the country and revealed that some oddball requests had added to the complicated logistics, without naming the players who made them.

“The most bizarre request was for a kitten in the lockdown room, and that wasn’t once, that was several times,” Tiley told broadcaster ABC.

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“But then we explained that actually there is a correlation between the coronavirus and kittens and that kind of request went away.

There had been some (requests) for dogs  and someone was joking about getting animals indigenous to Australia in there as well.

“There were a few times I wouldn’t mind putting a boxing kangaroo in there,” Tiley joked.

Tiley admitted that putting on the Grand Slam during a pandemic had put him under huge pressure, but said the positives outweighed the negatives.