Martina Navratilova & Pam Shriver criticize Australian Open for making Taylor Townsend, Jelena Ostapenko & co play under partial sun in doubles final

The Australian Open 2025 women's doubles final was contested on Sunday, 26th January, with Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend winning the match. The match was played during sunny conditions. Former WTA pros Pam Shriver and Martina Navratilova criticized the tournament organizers for making the women's doubles finalists play under the partial sun.

Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, which means that the summertime was quite evident during the match as there were shadows all over the court, making it quite tough to watch the game.

Doubles tennis is very snappy, the ball moves quickly, but from the camera angle with the bright sun, one could barely see the ball at times, and some former players found that rather unfortunate. While there were lots of great rallies in the match, some of them weren't visible properly amid the sunny conditions Down Under.

Considering that the main court of the Australian Open features a roof, former player Pam Shriver called upon the organizers to utilize that roof to make the viewing experience that much better for everybody involved.

"Congratulations to doubles winners but can we do better than this when roofs are available to help with shadows? Doubles viewers on TV deserve better than this," Pam Shriver wrote on X.

Echoing Shriver's sentiments, fellow former player Martina Navratilova, who has played lots of doubles in her time and appreciates that part of the sport quite a bit, reshared the post made by Shriver and wrote:

"Amen to that!" Navratilova wrote.

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Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend crowned 2025 Australian Open doubles champions

2025 Australian Open - Day 15 - Source: Getty

The final was a really exciting affair because we had World No. 1 in doubles, Katerina Siniakova, and World No. 5, Taylor Townsend, taking on World No. 6, Su Wei Hsieh, and No. 8, Jelena Ostapenko. The matchup had it all, as on one hand, we had Ostapenko's unpredictability paired with the veteran experience of Hsieh.

On the other, we had Katerina Siniakova, who has been a household name in the doubles world for years now, paired up with Taylor Townsend, who has quickly emerged as one of the better doubles players. The Czech-American pair won the opening set rather easily, 6-2, and served for the match in the second set, but they failed to serve it out.

They then lost in the tiebreak but bounced back to win the match in the final set, with the final score being 6-2, 6-7(4), 6-3. With this win, Katerina Siniakova clinched her 10th Doubles Major and her third Australian Open Doubles title.