Australian Open: day seven blog<\/a><\/p>\nPlay is suspended and roofs closed at Melbourne Park as sweltering temperatures forced players off court.<\/p>\n
Pegula completed her victory in an hour and six minutes on Margaret Court Arena, avoiding the hotter conditions that descended on Melbourne Park in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
“It started to get a little hot,” Pegula told her post-match media conference.<\/p>\n
“I just tried to use the ice towels as much as I could, just pre-cooling a lot.<\/p>\n
“Not necessarily [because] it felt that hot at the moment, but if it did start to creep up or if something happened and we go into a third (set), I definitely think it could kind of zap you pretty quick.<\/p>\n
“The fact that we haven’t been playing that much in the hot temperatures is what gets people, I think. You have no kind of tolerance to it.”<\/p>\n
![\"Madison](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/a9663620b64b13f4512ace7880ed6995.jpeg\")
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Madison Keys was among the first players who took to the courts. (AP: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)<\/p>\n
Defending champion Madison Keys, who faces fellow American Pegula in the fourth round, also played in the morning.<\/p>\n
Ninth-seeded Keys defeated Karol\u00edna Pl\u00ed\u0161kov\u00e1 6-3, 6-3 on Rod Laver Arena, although she was not troubled by the heat.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t really notice it that much, to be honest,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Coming off the court, I was actually kind of surprised by how hot it was actually reading.<\/p>\n
“It didn’t feel that bad to me out there, but it obviously helps finishing as early as we did.”<\/p>\n
Saturday will not be the only day in which the Australian Open will have to deal with extreme heat.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s long-range forecast is above 40C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian Open organisers were forced to implement their extreme heat protocols, as Melbourne Park dealt with scorching weather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,6571,226924,1678,226923,21898,27488,68138,188599,44,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-433969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-australian-open","11":"tag-cramping","12":"tag-heat","13":"tag-heat-stress-scale","14":"tag-hot-weather","15":"tag-jessica-pegula","16":"tag-madison-keys","17":"tag-melbourne-park","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/b4a5124b53151352a6eb383c474f4ad4.jpeg\")
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