During the heatwave I was thinking of not bothering with this column. People don't understand what a very physical business writing is.
Even on cool days, fear of deadlines and panic over the absence of ideas can generate enough energy to fry an egg on a bald head. Add an external temperature of 40-plus, and you've got unpalatable burnt bits and a hard yolk. So it's down tools and still pick up the pay cheque.
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Nick Kyrgios meltdowns, stunning free kicks and clutch NFL plays, these are the most exciting, silly and downright crazy plays in the sporting world this week.
Except I'm not a tennis player.
Or, I was thinking of firing up for half an hour and see if the thing flows. If nothing came, it was call in the trainer for a token consult, invoke the extreme weather rule, and still pick up that cheque on the way out.
![Illustration Simon Letch](/web/20170122213212im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/v/d/8/s/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtv7ab.png/1484898013579.jpg)
I really wish I was a tennis player.
At time of writing, which is Thursday afternoon thanks to early deadlines in the post-truth age, the temperature has dropped but the number of mid-match retirements from the Australian Open is still rising.
Italy's Sara Errani has just pulled out during the second set of her second-round match against Russia's Ekaterina Makarova, and my emotional involvement in this tournament has registered an unexpected pulse.
I never thought I would get so annoyed by anything occurring between Errani and Makarova, but this is the eighth retirement during this year's Open, which means that by day four it has already matched the record of eight – which was set last year.
![Credit to Nick Kyrgios. He did not throw in the towel.](/web/20170122213212im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/u/5/i/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtv7ab.png/1484877812371.jpg)
Errani pockets $80,000 as a second-round quitter, sorry, "loser", minus management fees and, possibly but not probably, income tax. The seven first-round retirees before her passed through Tullamarine with $50,000 apiece.
Mommas, let your babies grow up to play tennis.
Now, before going all-out and accusing tennis professionals of having pea-hearts (and that's just the grand slam qualifiers, let's not even start on the Southern Riverina regional challenger circuit), it might be wise to consider the evidence.
In the last two Australian Opens 16 players have retired. In 2015 four retired; in 2014, two; in 2013, just one; and in 2012, six. In the supposedly furnace-like heat of the 2015 US Open (like it had never got hot in Queens in late summer before), a record 11 players retired from the men's draw alone.
So is this increase in retirements a thing, or a conspiracy theory worked up by anti-progress green pinkos? Are the denialists right, and it's a manipulation of the data to hoodwink working families? What does the President think?
Thanks to stark raving mad but interesting and helpful sports trainspotter Jeff Sackmann and his website Heavy Topspin (and I thought I needed to get a life), there is some tennis data to argue about.
I haven't verified all of Sackmann's results personally, and so he might be a purveyor of fake news and uncorroborated Twitter output, but he has contributed to ESPN and The Economist (online versions) and used to play the saxophone, so I trust him.
According to Heavy Topspin, the average number of annual retirements from all four grand slam tournaments from 1997 to 2014 was 11, or just under four per tournament. That equates to 2.2 per cent of matches. From 1977 to 2014, that rate had trebled from 0.7 per cent. Back in '77, not even Bjorn Borg and the heyday of industrial carbon emissions could put an opponent off: there was an average of just one retirement per grand slam.
It's definitely a thing across all pro tennis, if you believe Heavy Topspin. The retirement rate (if not the retirement age) has gone up by 50 per cent across the men's and women's games in the past decade. In the past four decades it's gone up by 300 per cent. Call me gullible, but I pronounce that a thing.
So why? As a tennis lover, Heavy Topspin adduces many mitigating factors, primarily the increased physicality of the sport. As someone who is as ambivalent about tennis as a ball teetering on the net cord without ever dropping, I call BS and here's why.
If the retirements were evenly spread across the rounds and fairly distributed between higher- and lower-ranked players, you could accept that they have risen because the game is just a lot harder than it used to be. But going through the 29 retirements in the past 5½ Australian Opens, 18 have been in round one and six in round two.
If physicality and fatigue were the reason, there would be more retirements in later rounds. More likely, half-fit players are presenting for the Open, doing just enough for their pay cheque, and then pulling out. The ones making it through to the later rounds are hurting, and probably carrying injuries, but with more to play for they show stouter hearts.
If it were just a matter of chance, injury and fitness, it wouldn't matter whether the quitting player was ranked higher or lower than their opponent. A pulled muscle knows no seeding. But the opposite is true. Of this year's eight retirements (so far), every one was the lower-ranked player. Of the 29 in those recent Australian Opens, 25 were unseeded players, making up the numbers, until they decided not to.
This is not to impute that any one of those players is a quitter, who cynically took the place of a more deserving player just for the money. As the White Stripes say, "Every single one's got a story to tell", even if you thought it was "Every single worm's got a story to tell".
But the Australian Open bears a disproportionate load of these retirements, and if you're not peed off about it you should be. Yes, it's hot in Melbourne, but the Open is the only grand slam with an extreme weather policy, a sensible move that remains exploited by some.
I get really riled up by quitters, almost enough to care about their matches in the first place. I can't imagine how ripped-off those who actually pay to attend the Open feel.
The moral, aka clickbait, of the story? Don't be too hard on Nick Kyrgios. You might think he quit on the inside, but at least his body stayed on the court until the end of its match. In today's tennis climate, he deserves a carbon credit for earning his money.
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