Deuce

Rafa warming up for this post

Getting into Wimbledon during the two-week grand-slam event is tricky at best – tickets are ‘exy’ and sellout super fast and allocation is dubious with a big chunk going to LTA members and corporates. Consequently whenever the media interview people from Brit Losers Mound (aka Henman’s Hill) they are invariably posh, public schoolgirls and shrill.

I’ve always liked my tennis me, and like a lot of people I have fond memories of watching some of the classic matches, like McEnroe vs Borg, Navaratilova vs Everett and Connors vs whomever he was playing. However, Wimbledon has never really been an option, partly for the reasons above but mostly because it rains all the time in England and chances are whatever day I choose will be washed out.

Where we at?

So, we find ourselves in Melbourne during the 2^nd week of the Australian Open, the first grand-slam event of the year. Ticket prices are not extortionate and we have plenty of time on our hands… what to do… what to do…

‘Course, weather still played a factor in our trip to Melbourne Park – hottest day on record in Melbourne for over 100 years – so hot in fact that they cancelled all play on the outer courts. Fortunately Melbourne Park has two covered courts, the Hisense and Rod Laver Arena so there was lots of play. We specifically bought evening session tickets but we managed to blag our way in early (sorry for the use of the word ‘blag’ – normally can’t stand it but that was basically what happened).

Kill him Nadal!!!

Frenchie outed

We watched a couple of doubles quarter-finals and then the men’s quarter-finals, most notably the Nadal vs Simon match which Nadal won comfortably in 3 sets.

The highlight of the day was when we stood and watched Nadal warm up in the blazing sun. He was fair bashing them tennis balls. We also walked past Martina Navaratilova, which was noice.

We finally left Rod Laver arena at around eleven-thirty. It was still in the 30’s so we walked along the river to the tram stop before jumping on the tram heading for Malvern and Brighton!?!

Hot dogs

It was a terrific day and I ate 3 hot dogs; they were delicious. I then had a major heart attack brought on by all the sodium. That wasn’t so noice.

Tennis viewing in Australia and specifically Melbourne Park seems to be much more egalitarian than in the UK. There was definitely a good mix of bogans, toffs and all of us that fit somewhere in-between enjoying the tennis both outside in the red-hot sun and inside the arenas. Luckily most of the Serbian and Croatian players have already been knocked out so we didn’t get caught up in a repeat of the ethnic tensions that spilled out in Garden Square last week.

New balls please.