I was there at the tournament for only one day due to a packed itinerary. I bought the ground passes online way earlier to avoid queuing up and paying more. Made the right choice! I saw long queues at Flinders St. over the weekend before the tournament kicked off as well as the tournament site on event day.
The venue is easily accessible by train and tram. I stopped at Richmond station and walked towards a very familiar building - the Hisense Arena. It's a tennis fan's dream to attend a Grand Slam tournament and I'm glad I have achieved mine.
I've attended ATP 250 tournaments so to compare to the Australian Open, this is like 50 times bigger. I was amazed by the passionate fans from all walks of life walking down from the train and trams walking towards the entrance. Some were wearing their favourite flags and AO caps, and some would proudly carry their Australian Open tote bags.
Australian Open trademark true blue
Checking in with the barcode system was smooth despite thousands of people already queuing up earlier than me. The first thing that caught my eyes was the trademark Australian Open True Blue at the Grand Slam Oval, a multi-faceted entertainment precinct is located. I quickly queued up for body painting - I've got myself Vamos Rafa on both of my arms. I’m not sure if any of the body painters had MFA degrees, but they were doing a fantastic job!
An Australian fan got his body painted
As my trip here was restricted to only one day, I didn't intend to watch any matches. I've planned to court hop and find out what were the facilities offered.I met up with a former colleague at the Malaysian Open last year. David Steed who worked on the IBM statistics and he gave me some tips on who were training on that day. Court 16 and 17 are top players usually training ground so if you’re at the Australian Open, you’ll probably hang out a lot here.
Stanislas Wawrinka vs Benoit Paire in the first round
There are plenty of food, beer and sun here! Surprisingly people don’t use umbrella here although it was so freaking hot. I was at Stanislas Wawrinka’s first round match and I only managed to sit through the first game! Do check out some of the pictures I took at the tournament. The sponsors’ presence never fail to amaze me – that’s why I took many of their pictures.
At Garden Square
Heineken beer garden
Places where you can get your food and drinks
Lacoste Clubhouse and Kia
Nestle Drumstick Walk on Water
Rolex
Inside Lacoste Clubhouse
Inside Hisense Arena
Janko Tipsarevic walks with style
Marcos Baghdatis
Philipp Kohlschreiber during the first round match against Juan Monaco
Michael Llodra at the Autograph Island
Rafael Nadal
Kim Clijsters
Juan Monaco
Roger Federer
Maria Sharapova
Ivan Ljubicic
Novak Djokovic the eventual champ
Kei Nishikori
(All images belong to HCFoo's Tennis Blog)
