The extreme heat in Melbourne has taken its toll on all those at the Australian Open – and Tim Henman is no exception judging by recent footage.
The season-opening Grand Slam recorded its hottest temperature in 17 years on Tuesday, with the mercury touching 43 degrees Celsius at around 4.30pm in the afternoon.
Play was temporarily suspended three hours before that on outside courts after the ‘Heat Stress Scale’ had climbed to 5.0: the level required for suspension. Implemented in 2019, four climate factors – air temperature, radiant heat, humidity and wind speed – are measured from various locations at Melbourne Park to determine the HSS measure.
And Henman, who is covering the tournament with TNT Sports, was certainly feeling the heat as depicted by Laura Robson’s Instagram story – in what could be a light-hearted gag.
Wearing a grey T-shirt, the former British No 1 can be seen red-faced with heavy sweat patches under his arms and down his neck and chest as he presented alongside Robson.
Accompanying the short-video, Robson captioned it with ‘some people can’t handle the heat’ as her colleague wiped away sweat from his face.
Tim Henman demonstrated how hot it is at the Australian Open with his sweaty clothing
Australian Open officials are taking drastic measures to protect those at the tournament, where the usual crowds thronging outside Melbourne Park dwindled to a ghost town as temperatures soared.
Inside, organisers enacted extreme heat protocols, forcing closure of the retractable roofs over the main arenas and postponement of matches on the uncovered outer courts.
During Tuesday’s quarter-final between Aryna Sabalenka and Iva Jovic – the last match played under the scorching sun – the players held ice packs to their heads and portable fans to their faces during breaks in play.
Photographers at the match were supplied with cushions by organizers to avoid heat-related injuries when they sat down and covered their cameras with towels to prevent the devices malfunctioning in the heat or burning their hands.
Fans lined up to stand in front of giant misting fans or sought shelter in air-conditioned areas of the venue.
Crowds at the event, which has registered record-breaking turnout days so far, dropped from 50,000 from Monday’s daytime session to 21,000 on Tuesday as people heeded health warnings from officials and stayed home.
Temperatures are expected to drop Wednesday, although the heat wave was due to linger until the weekend. The heat wave followed another earlier this month amid one of Australia’s hottest ever summers.
Melbourne isn’t even the hottest place in the Victoria state, as other locations sweltered in record temperatures of close to 50 degrees Celsius.
Aryna Sabalenka applies an ice pack to her face to combat the heat during Tuesday’s play
The rural towns of Hopetoun and Walpeup registered preliminary highs of 48.9 degrees Celsius, which if confirmed overnight would top records set on the day in 2009 when 173 people were killed in the state’s devastating Black Saturday bushfires.
No casualties were reported from Tuesday’s heat wave, but Victoria authorities urged caution as three forest fires burned out of control.
