The Australian Open

Every week in Melbourne, there's a new festival, event, or sports final on - for the past two weeks, it was the Australian Open, one of the four Grand Slams of Tennis. We got last-minute tickets to the fourth round match between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic of Serbia. The tennis world was rocked - or at least mightily puzzled - by reports earlier in the week of ethnic violence between Serbian supporters and Croatian supporters at the tennis match. The match we watched featured Serbian fans waving flags and banners, and chanting and singing in Serbian between points. Some of the outside matches featuring Australian players had fans cheering "Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!" - does this sort of thing happen at Wimbledon?

Our favourite part of the tennis has to be the ball boys (and girls). They have a perfectly choreographed routine where they run back and forth, then roll the balls back to the ball boys at the end of the court, who hold them up, throwing them to the players if requested. Between sets, they have a "Changing of the Ballboys" where they march out in single file and are replaced by a new set.


Before the main match inside, we watched a few lower profile matches on the outside courts, including one featuring the only Canadian in the tournament, Daniel Nestor. He was playing men's doubles - or rather, trying to. It was raining intermittently, so the ballboys had to blow dry the court with leaf blowers, then wipe it down with towels, only to have the skies open up again. We figured we should give the Canadian our support - since we'd never heard of him, we presumed he was not favoured to win. It turns out that he's one of the better doubles players in tennis, and went on to win the championship in mixed doubles with his Russian partner. We came back a few days later for his mixed doubles semi-final, which featured triple distractions of an outdoor rave across the river, Australia Day fireworks in the middle of the match, and Chilean fans celebrating the semi-final victory of Fernando Gonzales. Poor doubles players - they never get the high profile that the singles players get!


Roger Federer won the fourth-round match we saw, and went on to win the entire tournament - it's nice to have seen three champions play, even though we can't afford tickets the finals.