Australian Open Tennis Rocks

(Last updated Jan. 17, 2009)

Okay, by now you’ve seen the cricket and Aussie Rules football pages of this website. Now it’s time to take a brief look at tennis in Australia, one of the leading spectator pastimes in this sports-crazy country. And you can’t talk about tennis without talking about the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year in the professional circuit. It’s always held in Melbourne, the sports capital of Australia, at the sprawling Melbourne Park tennis centre alongside the meandering Yarra River and in the shadow of the huge (100,000-seat) Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Melbourne Park (see image below) includes the 15,000-seat, retractable-roofed Rod Laver Arena, which is the venue for the top Aussie Open matches. It’s named, of course, after the legendary Aussie tennis star, Rod Laver, the only player in tennis history to win two Grand Slam titles (winning the Australian, French, Wimbledon and U.S. opens). The venue also is home to the Hisense Arena, also with a retractable-roof; the outdoor Margaret Court Arena, numerous lesser outdoor courts; the Olympic Park outdoor stadium, and now under construction a new soccer stadium. Besides the Melbourne Cricket Ground, this sports-mad city also is home to the retractable-roofed Docklands Stadium, where Aussie Rules football, soccer and other sports are played.

Alma and I have been to some Aussie Open matches at Rod Laver and to some pre-Open tournaments at the charming old Kooyong Tennis Club, where the world’s top players tune up their game the week before the Open is held (Jan. 19-Feb. 1 this year). We like the Kooyong tournament because the old stadium (where the Open used to be held before bigger facilities were built at Melbourne Park) is an intimate, friendly stadium where even the cheapest seats make you feel that you are courtside. The benches may be a bit hard and the unshaded sections can get pretty hot in the midday sun, but for $44 a seat this year we watched Marcos Bagdadis and Roger Federer each win a match and could have watched Carlos Moya if we had wanted to stay longer. There’s a friendly, casual atmosphere at the Kooyong tournaments, where it’s not unusual for high-ranked players in the Open to wander into the bleachers and sit with the duffers as they scout out potential opponents.

Other pre-Open tournaments are held in Perth, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, most of them televised. When the Aussie Open begins, no matter which pub you walk into in the city, you’ll find a TV tuned into the competition and everybody talking about “the tennis” even if they don’t play the game. That’s Australia for you.

Understandably, Australians have been in a bit of strife over the state of world-class tennis here in the last few years. In the 1950s, Australia dominated the world tennis circuit, showing itself to be far and away the best year after year. That was when nearly one in three households had a tennis court in the backyard, and when junior tennis was pumping out future champions at a rapid rate. Aussies like John Newcombe, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Evone Goolagong and Margaret Court led the Grand Slam circuit and put Australia on the map. Now the talent pool seems a bit thin at times, and Australians want to know what’s coming up from the younger ranks and what is the future of tennis in this sports-mad country. Lleyton Hewitt is one of the few challengers, and he’s been struggling with form and injuries both. The four top seeds in this year’s Australian Open are Rafael Nadal, of Spain; Roger Federer, of Switzerland; Novak Djokovic of Serbia, and Andy Murray of Scotland. The top women contenders are Jelene Jankovic of Serbia, Serena Williams of the U.S., Dina Safina of Russia and Elena Dementieva of Russia.

Here are a few images: