Doing Just Fines

For destroying new camera technology and wreaking havoc at the Australian Open, Daniil Medvedev has forced a rewriting of crime and punishment.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Experienced tennis reporters and broadcasters had noticed something was missing from this week at the Australian Open:

The fines list.

Sent from the tournament referee’s office to the communications departments and updated throughout the tournament, the list of fines and their amounts is a fixture of Grand Slam information and coverage. These lists name the player, the match in which the infraction occurred, and a letter showing which code violation in the rulebook caused the penalty.

The fines list used to be printed out and taped to a wall somewhere in the press room; since Covid-19, it’s been made available electronically.

Here, for a recent example of the document, is the fines list from the men’s side of the 2022 Australian Open (with a key of the code violations below to decipher it):

This year, there was a designated “Player Fines” tab on the 2025 Australian Open Media Hub website ready to hold this information.

But even as the third round of main draw play at the Australian Open was wrapping up on Day 7, the page has stayed stubbornly blank.

Tennis Australia officials finally provided persistently pestering reporters some explanation on Saturday, explaining that the delay on the fines list was twofold.

First, there was a delay because one of the fines was being leveled against a player who had already left Melbourne, and they wanted to be able to inform the player of the penalty before publishing it. Secondly, they had to figure out just how to quantify the damage the player had done.

Those twofold reasons are about just one person, as people who have been paying attention to misbehavior at the 2025 Australian Open can probably guess: three-time Australian Open runner-up Daniil Medvedev.

[After a few free posts, dropping the paywall higher up on this one, but I really do think it will be worth it for this piece and beyond! -Ben]