Australian Open: Players get creative to handle lockdown boredom

Other players who arrived on different flights are also undertaking a mandatory quarantine but are permitted to leave their hotel rooms for five hours a day to train.

Subathing by the window, hitting balls against a mattress and running sprints in corridors, quarantined tennis players are getting creative as they try to kill time in their hotel rooms before next month's Australian Open.

Tennis players taking part in the Australian Open are escorted to their training session in Melbourne, Australia, January 18, 2021. (REUTERS)

Passengers on three Australian Open charter flights have been sent into hard quarantine, with more than 70 players unable to train outside their hotel rooms for 14 days ahead of the year's first Grand Slam that begins on Feb. 8.

Other players who arrived on different flights are also undertaking a mandatory quarantine but are permitted to leave their hotel rooms for five hours a day to train.

"I'm committed to do whatever it takes to get ready despite the circumstances. Time to get creative," Tunisia's Ons Jabeur said in a tweet accompanied by a video of her hitting a ball against an upturned mattress.

World number 38 Barbora Strycova posted a video of herself assembling an exercise bike and joked she may have found her true calling.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.