A selection of brief stories from the Australian Open on Tuesday:
Roger’s snooze-flash Roger Federer said he rarely lost sleep over an opponent, and was more likely to be kept up by his two-year-old twin girls. “A little bit. Sometimes. Rarely. It’s more the girls than the opponent,” he said. “It does occasionally happen, yes.” And Federer said he was inspired by seeing Australian great Roy Emerson courtside for his quarter-final victory over Juan Martin del Potro. “I saw Roy Emerson also today sitting there all of a sudden. I said, ‘Oh, that’s nice to see you.’ But I didn’t say that and I didn’t acknowledge him, because I’m pretending to be focused, right?” he said. “I was very happy to see him. It’s nice to see greats and legends come out and watch my generation play on the big courts.”
Ivan off-colour joke Ivan Lendl’s doing more than helping Andy Murray’s game — he’s also making him laugh. Murray said the Czech great often kept him amused with his off-colour jokes. But when asked to give an example, he demurred. “None of them are clean enough for TV. None of them,” Murray said. Lendl also showed his quirky side when he covered a TV lens with a towel during Murray’s last match. And the Scot demonstrated his dry sense of humour when he joked about Britain’s long-running quest for a men’s grand slam win. “I don’t know if you’re away but in the UK we haven’t won a grand slam for like 100 years. I haven’t heard many people talking about it in the last five or six years,” Murray said. Ristic idyll: Novak Djokovic has declared himself off-limits to women after getting serious with girlfriend Jelena Ristic. “There is a lot of temptations, especially when you’re at the top. Obviously you get more attention and more temptations to do some things that can affect your performance in a negative way,” Djokovic said, before being asked if he was talking about girls.
