When Ben Mitchell won his semifinal match at the Australian Open wild-card playoffs in December, his girlfriend’s reaction was underwhelming, and he knew why.
Mitchell’s girlfriend, Lois Ovett, was in Brisbane, 850 miles to the northeast of the tournament in Melbourne, and her contractions were coming closer together.
“Talk about Murphy’s law,” Mitchell said. “The amount of times someone asked me, ‘Mate, if you’re in the final and she goes into labor, what are you going to do?’ I can’t tell you the amount of times I got asked that. Obviously, it happened.”
In the midst of a week when he had won three best-of-five-sets matches to reach the final, Mitchell, a 23-year-old ranked 231st, began booking flights to leave town.
“It was always in the back of my mind, and I refused to think about it,” he said. “But I always knew that I would go home and not play if she were to go into labor.”
And so, on the night before the final, Mitchell boarded a plane to Brisbane. Before takeoff, Ovett texted him to say that her water had broken.
After a considerably nerve-racking flight — Mitchell rented a tablet from the flight crew and tried to focus on watching “Love Actually” to take his mind off what was happening — he made it to the hospital room in plenty of time. Hours later, his daughter, Zara, was born.
But as the sun rose on the day of the final, Mitchell’s chance at a spot in the Australian Open main draw, and the accompanying $40,000 check, was gone.
“When you’re witnessing the birth on your own child, you can’t put a price tag on that,” he said. “No amount of money could stop me from doing that.
“Of course, it hurts, but not once did I think about it during labor or any stretch after she was born. It didn’t even enter my mind. When they said I’d been defaulted, I had Zara in my arms. It was all good.”
Extraordinary as his predicament was, the stakes and distance at play for Mitchell pale in comparison to those for another expecting father. Andy Murray, the second-ranked player in the men’s field at the Australian Open, has said that he will leave Melbourne and fly home to be with his wife, Kim, if she gives birth in Britain during the tournament, even if Murray has reached the final match.
The men’s final is more than a week before her due date, but the Murrays have planned for all eventualities, as he discussed after a match at the Hopman Cup last week.
“Obviously, it would be disappointing if I was to get to that position and not be able to play the final,” Murray said. “But I also said that I think I would be way more disappointed winning the Australian Open and missing the birth of the child, so it was quite an easy decision in the end. But hopefully, it doesn’t come to that; the baby isn’t due until the second week of February, so hopefully, everything will be fine.”
For some players, the timing has indeed worked out perfectly. In 2012, Bob Bryan played the Australian Open men’s doubles final on his wife’s due date — “Hopefully, I won’t have to have a Skype baby,” he said at the time — and made it back to the United States in time for her postdue labor.
In an era before Skype, Andrei Pavel left Paris during a rain delay at the 2002 French Open and drove more than 400 miles to where his wife was giving birth in Borgholzhausen, Germany. The rainstorm held off play for the day. Pavel reached his wife in time for the birth, then he drove back to Paris to resume his match the next day, though he was too drained to put up much resistance and lost quickly.
Other expectant fathers have not been within driving distance when the moment arrived. During the 2010 U.S. Open, Gilles Simon awoke in his New York hotel room to a text from his wife, Carine Lauret, saying she believed she was going into labor in France several weeks before her due date. Simon, who had planned a six-week break in his schedule after the tournament to be with her before and after the birth, would not have made it back to France for the sudden arrival of his son.
“My wife was on the phone, saying, ‘I think it’s now,’” Simon said last week. “And you are in the States, alone in your room, and you feel, ‘What am I doing here?’ And it’s a strange feeling — you are happy, but you are so sad that you’re not there. So it’s a bit mixed. But then, it’s just that there’s nothing you can do anymore. You cannot go back in time.”
Simon stayed in New York and played a “relaxed” match against Rafael Nadal in the next round, hardly distressed to be sent home.
Simon’s second child was also born during the Open, but this time, an injury that had forced him out of the tournament meant that he could be there for the occasion.
“That’s our biggest weakness, I would say: We are just not there enough,” he said.
Roger Federer, a father of four, said he like Murray, would have made the same decision to abandon a Grand Slam event to return home.
“All depends on what your priority is: Is it tennis or family?” Federer said. “For me, I mean, I love my family, and that’s what it is.”
Federer’s children arrived as two sets of twins, both times during a lull in the tennis calendar.
Mitchell, who plans to play in the qualifying draw of the Australian Open next week for one last shot to make it into the main draw, marveled at Federer’s timing.
“Roger, he’s just perfect, isn’t he?” Mitchell said, laughing. “Even his kids come out at the right times, so he’s perfect on and off the court. If you can do that, that’s too good. Pat yourself on the back.”
Federer said he did not recall planning out the births of his children to be minimally disruptive.
“It’s OK to miss Slams, just to let you know,” Federer said. “It’s not life. Life is not a Slam. Life is the next, whatever, 60 years that follow after that with the kids.”
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