If you have been unable to suppress that constant high pitched background sound, don’t be alarmed, that’s not tinnitus. That’s the tennis players’ and WAGs’ shrill thrum from their plush Australian hotels complaining about mundane pandemic living in 2021, so very, very, very much like what normal shelter-in-place people have to do. That, drongo, is just not on.
Part of the fallout now is that we have to deal with sounds that cannot be unheard and images that cannot be unseen such as those conjured by former Oz Love Island contestant Vanessa Sierra, a highly skilled and prolific supplier of content to the subscription site OnlyFans.
OnlyFans is a ‘subscription site that enables content creators to monetise their influence’, a platform that allows people upload their content behind a pay wall, which can be accessed for ‘ching’ a monthly fee.
Sierra is the girlfriend of Australian professional Bernard Tomic, a hugely polarising figure in the game, who was once ranked 14th in the world and is now outside the top 200. Talented, he's known for tanking in matches, arguing with anyone, and he's completely agnostic in that, and getting arrested. A phenom but in a different way as imagined by Australian tennis 15 years ago.
“There is only one bathroom and I’ve never pooped in front of Bernard. I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s day three. I just cannot do it in front of him. I haven’t broken that barrier in the relationship yet,” Sierra revealed to horrified fans.
You think, jeez, too much detail. You wouldn't expect Tomic to have the same living quarters as world number one, no pun intended, Novak 'Djoker' Djokovic. But it's not like the Aussie doesn't have a brass razoo for a decent hotel with a bathroom door that can be closed come performance time. Or, maybe just victims of a crazy no door design fetish.
The micro-thonged social media sensation then went on to detail the “worst part of quarantine”, the fact she had to wash her own hair.
“It’s just not something that I do,” she mewed. “I usually have hairdressers that do it twice a week for me.”
‘Decent food’
It is difficult to decide which of the unfolding crisis’s deserves the greater part of our undivided attention. Because in Adelaide, Djoker decided that when the world’s will won’t bend to yours, make demands. So, quarantine conditions should be eased, the isolation period reduced, players should move to private houses with access to a tennis court and the delivery of “decent food” and fitness equipment.
Not at all disheartened or even shamed following his ill-conceived super spreading Adria Tour event last summer after which he was forced to apologise. He and wife Jelena were infected along with three prominent players and two coaches.
Apparently, the Belgrade event was a screamer. Social distancing not enforced in the mask-free series, players willingly mingled, exchanging hugs and handshakes, playing pickup soccer and basketball, and even dancing the limbo. Well, the lower the better.
“I am so deeply sorry our tournament has caused harm,” said Djoker on social media before the recent liberation demands.
Smartly rebuffed by Victoria quarantine commissioner Emma Cassar and state premier Daniel Andrews, the number one copped further criticism from an Australian player even badder than Tomic, Nick Kyrgios, who branded the Serbian a "tool".
Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut, ranked 13th in the world with career earnings of €13 million give or take, was not without spitting rage either, comparing the quarantine in Melbourne to “jail with wifi”.
“It’s the same, it’s the same [as being in prison] with wifi. These people have no idea about tennis, about practice courts, no idea about anything,” he said. French player Alize Cornet described the situation as “insane” in a since deleted post.
Cat fight
What began as a short-tempered glimpse into how the sporting celebrity world tilts on its axis that little bit differently, has morphed into a cat fight. The diva turns, the self-serving tantrums, the over blown sense of deprivation and the reluctance to accept a world not totally under their control, all preserved in digital aspic.
Because as the days pass the failure of some players to grasp perspective has been transformed into an escalating beef that the Adelaide-based crew are having an easier time than the incarcerated in their de-luxe Melbourne prisons.
Australian Open and twice US Open winner Naomi Osaka, inadvertently thumbed her nose on social media with a picture of training on a tennis court with four members of her training staff. Freedom loving Adelaide.
But the overweening sense of grievances over hair-dos, embarrassing poohs, jail time and better food at chow down has become one of those frightening looks in the mirror, when you see what you’ve become.
If there’s anything worse than being treated the same as others, it’s others being treated differently to you. It’s the shock of finding out privilege is not with you this time but somebody else, realising you have been dealt a hand you don’t like but are helpless to make a change. It’s what ordinary people regularly face, life as a series of least-worst choices.
Vexed and irritable, stressed laboratory mice turning on each other. High maintenance stars, as Aussies say, getting up themselves, showing that tennis normal is so very, very, very much not.
