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Australian Open: Tantrums, trolls and temperature tumbles

Daniel Hicks (Agence France-Presse)
Melbourne, Australia
Fri, January 19, 2018

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Australian Open: Tantrums, trolls and temperature tumbles Australia's Daria Gavrilova gestures as she queries a linecall during her women's singles second round match against Belgium's Elise Mertens on day three of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on early January 18, 2018. (Agence France -Presse/Paul Crock)

Brief stories from day five of the Australian Open on Friday.

CoCo in more hot water

CoCo Vandeweghe was Friday slapped with the largest fine at the Australian Open so far for her expletive-laden outburst directed at her conqueror Timea Babos in the first round.

As the 10th seed was dumped out at the first hurdle Monday, she also at one stage copped a code violation for delaying play to eat a banana.

Organisers fined her US$10,000 for unsportsmanlike conduct for the verbals, which were followed immediately by the slamming of the fiery American's racquet into the court. 

Her going bananas, however, went without further sanction.

Anti-social media riles Dasha

Daria Gavrilova is the darling of the local crowd at Melbourne Park, but some online Aussie punters took vitriolic exception when she blew a 5-0 first set lead in the early hours of Thursday morning to lose her second-round match.

"Dasha" became the victim of some unpleasant trolls who had lost money as a result and took it upon themselves to fire unprintable abuse across her social media channels.

It was so bad she had to change her Instagram privacy settings.

"Thanks everyone who keeps supporting me and for all your sweet messages!" Gavrilova posted on Instagram late Thursday.

"Shhh to all the betting people ... I copped it hard last night. Only people I follow can comment on my posts now ... so my family doesn't see all the 'love' I get".

Hot and cold comfort

Melbourne is well known for its weather extremes. But both ends of the scale in one day?

Friday carried on where Thursday left off with sweltering heat and thermometers hitting 40 Celsius in the shade by 2:00 pm local time.

Some players suffered in the kiln-like conditions, some complained it was unfair even to play and Roger Federer said that everyone should just get on with it.

Then, suddenly a cold front swept through in the afternoon and the mercury began to plummet, visibly, to the joy of players, spectators and staff at the sprawling Australian Open venue. 

By 6pm thermometers had tumbled to 28C and by just after sunset at 9pm it was a positively chilly 24C -- an incredible drop of 16C in seven hours.

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