The highs, lows of Craig Tiley's Australian Open reign

THE STRIFE AND TIMES OF CRAIG TILEY'S 21-YEAR TENURE AS AUSTRALIAN OPEN BOSS: 2021: Tiley pulls off impossible Australian Open during COVID-19 Ensuring a first - and only - February AO went ahead during the COVID pandemic may well be Tiley's greatest feat in Australia but, boy, did it take a toll. The South African-born administrator and innovator revealed to AAP how he had to leave his family home in Melbourne because he was not fit to be a father such was the stress of working around the clock, dealing with 72 players in hard quarantine before the event and fronting up to 451 mostly frustrated people in lockdown for at least five hours a night "I got abused on the calls. I was getting hammered. It was significant," Tiley said. "But normally when you take heat, you take it once. This was 15 straight days. It's like being attacked for 15 straight days, verbally" That's when Tiley sent his wife Ali, his twin boys, aged only seven, and eight-year-old daughter to Rosebud on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula "Because the stress was too much on the house," he said. "It was too hard because I don't think I was in a place to be effective when I was at home" But, somehow, the show went on, the Australian Open being the first major sporting event to be staged during the coronavirus 2022: Tiley at the centre of sensational Djokovic deportation If he thought the 2021 Open was rough, Tiley was left fighting for his job after presiding over one of the most infamous international sporting incidents in Australian history. After not being vaccinated or having the appropriate visa, nine-times champion Novak Djokovic was deported on the eve of the 2022 AO, leaving a huge hole at the top of the men's draw, after the Serb was forced to await his fate alongside refugees in Melbourne hotel detention in one of the ugliest sporting episodes of the year After TA and then-Victorian premier Dan Andrews Andrews moved to have an independent panel established to determine requests for medical exemptions against having the COVID-19, Tiley declined to accept responsibility for the saga But the AO's "Happy Slam" status was in danger inside the unhappy locker rooms. "The regret I have is (we have) 256 main-draw players, 256 qualifying players and the feedback we're getting from them is that the environment here at the time was a distraction for them," was all Tiley conceded 2026: Tiley's time comes to an end after "probably the best" Open ever Three weeks after claiming the Australian Open now trumps the Super Bowl for viewing audiences and detailing ambitious plans to transform the billion-dollar behemoth into the biggest sporting event on the planet, Tiley confirmed the worst-kept secret in tennis He is leaving TA to become the USTA chief executive and run the US Open in New York, at age 63 "People say, 'You're mad'. I mean, I do have a great life here," he told AAP. "The big thing for me was I do like a challenge. I like change" The change in the tennis landscape since Tiley's arrival in Melbourne in 2005 has been monumental and he is promising even more Tiley envisions future Australian Opens will feature fans being served by drones, a high-tech immersive dome for off-site fans, a courtside "Pit Lane" for players to have match-time medical monitoring and facilities at Melbourne Park for the world's biggest tennis stars to have their annual health checks "We're going to provide all those services - mammograms, cervical cancer screening, melanoma screening, get your teeth fixed, have an MRI if you have some issues with your body," Tiley reckons. "Get performance advice, podiatry advice, having the best doctors here and helping you out. We want to bring the 22nd century into the Australian Open"