Tennis: Australian Open, not even Thiem will be there

Next Saturday the ATP Cup begins in Sydney, with Italy ready for its debut on Sunday against the hosts, but there is great confusion under the Australian sky, between continuous announcements of renunciations and mysteries that are not clarified even in sight of the much more important Australian Open, starting on January 17th. Covid-19 is the most imminent threat but it is not due to a contagion that the Austrian Dominic Thiem forfeit the first major of the season, who has announced that he will miss the tournament in which in 2020 he reached the final, climbing up to the third step of the world podium. The 28-year-old injured his wrist last June in Mallorca and has since slipped to number 15, with the confident prospect of dropping even further after his decision. "The wrist is fine but with my team we decided to start the season in Argentina, at the Cordoba Open, at the end of January - he said on social media -. You will see me again in Australia in 2023 ". With him, at the moment, Roger Federer, Stan Wawrinka, Miroslav Raonic and others will certainly miss, with strong doubts about Andrey Rublev, Rafa Nadal and Dimitri Shapovalov, positive for covid after participating in the tournament Above all, the mystery hovers over the presence of Novak Djokovic both at the Atp Cup and at the Open held in Melbourne and for which all players must prove that they have received two doses of one of the vaccines, or obtain medical exemption Tennis Australia said it had not received "news of any withdrawal from Team Serbia for the ATP Cup".World number 2 has already arrived in Sydney, Daniil Medvedev, who will lead the reigning champion Russia, but without Rublev. Italy, included in the same group as Russia, remains the only nation with two top 10 at the start, Matteo Berrettini and Jannik Sinner, who have trained together today.