Day 1 of a Grand Slam is always pretty huge - so much to try and see! First up, I headed over to Juan Carlos Ferrero's match...he was playing Jan Hajek. At 3-0 in the first set, I just got myself a nice seat with a great view, only to find that Hajek was retiring from the match! It was good for Juan Carlos, but not for me because I was looking forward to the match! Ok, time for something else - Marc Gicquel's match against Alun Jones. The crowd was very pro-Australian so we cheered for Marc, who needed the support since he was losing. On the adjacent court, Gilles Simon was also getting creamed...not a good start for the Frenchies! I went and joined my friends on Show Court 2...they had managed to get front row seats for Richard Gasquet's match against Filippo Volandri. It was a pretty routine match for Richard, so at least one Frenchie was through! After having lunch with some more friends, I went back to see Marc Gicquel's match, which was still going, though he had picked up his form a bit and ended up winning. After that it was on to see a bit of Nicolas Mahut against Juan Monaco...and on the adjacent court, Juergen Melzer and Ivo Karlovic...although the heat and loud Croatian fans started to get on our nerves! I watched a few games of Anabel Medina Garrigues' match against Elena Vesnina - I am not normally a fan of women's tennis, but Anabel had been cool at the Hopman Cup. After that, I tried to get into court 8 to see Olivier Patience's match against Jonas Bjorkman, but alas, the fact that Olivier was playing a Swede meant half of Sweden was at the match, complete with viking horns. So I resigned myself to standing in the corner and watching, and didn't have too bad a view either. Sebastien Grosjean and Arnaud Clement also stood there for a while. After further examination, I have to say Olivier is still the hottest player on the circuit by far...not even Marat Safin comes close. I left the match for a little while to go to Show Court 3 where Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo was playing Tommy Robredo, but I only ended up staying a few games because it was a pretty boring, one-sided match. Back to Olivier's match only to find he had blown a 2 sets to love lead and was now a break down in the fifth! Merde! The Swedes were really annoying him and the umpire had to reprimand them several times for calling out during his serve. In the end, Jonas won and Olivier stormed off, pushing past the Swedes on his way out...not a happy chappy.
By this time, it was already pretty late, so we left to have some dinner. As I was walking into the Crown complex, I saw Olivier sitting at one of the outside tables with 2 older people. He must have had a lightning quick change because it seemed like I had only just seen him on court, but either way, he looked pretty gutted. I also saw Nicole Vaidisova in the arcade, and then it was attack of the Belgians in the casino with Kristof Vliegen, Olivier Rochus and Xavier Malisse. Florian Mayer was also having a little gamble on his own. But after a while, I left because I was quite tired and wanted to watch the match between Marat Safin and Benjamin Becker on tv - it turned out to be a cracker, with Marat winning in 5.
Tuesday 16 January 2007
Day 2, yet another busy day with more first round matches. Today was going to be a scorcher: 39 degrees celcius (about 100 degrees fahrenheit). Already at 11am it was very, very unpleasant outside. We stood in what little shade there was to watch the practice session with Guillermo Garcia Lopez and Juan Carlos Ferrero. Not the most sensible time to be doing a practice, but I guess it's good to get them into condition. I ventured out to the far court 15 to see a bit of Julien Benneteau's match against Paul Capdeville. It was packed out with Chileans so it was hard to get a good spot, and it was just so hot, I decided to pike. I heard Julien was vomitting with heat exhaustion by the end of the match though. Ridiculous that the players have to keep playing in that heat - even David Nalbandian and Maria Sharapova complained about it. Apparently, the heat rule states that if the match has already started, it must keep going and only new matches can be postponed. That is insane...one day one of the players is going to die out there. And it's no easier for the spectators either - it always amazes me that there are so many campaigns in Australia for skin cancer prevention, yet they cannot provide any sort of shade at the Australian Open. I mentioned this in my last year's report and guess what, nothing has been done to rectify the problem. So what was the result? Close to 300 spectators having to be treated for heat exhaustion, with many colapsing and having to be taken to hospital. This is no way to run an event intended for leisure. My friend and I stopped to see a bit of Fernando Verdasco's practice, and I also put my head in at Juan Ignacio Chela's match against Potito Starace. His coach, Mariano Monachesi, who used to be Tommy Robredo's coach, was there and was really nice. By now it was about 1pm and just impossible to remain outside. We felt like we were about to faint, so we went into one of the only air conditioned places in the entire complex - Rod Laver Arena. We couldn't actually go into the stadium, but we just went inside the lobby area where all the restaurants are, and stood as close as possible to the air conditioning vent! Gradually, all the outside courts' play was suspended and only RLA and Vodafone Arena's matches kept going undercover. We ended up sitting on the floor in the lobby of Rod Laver Arena for about 5 hours, staring into space, sleeping, eating ice creams and getting ripped off buying bottles of Evian. When it became a tiny bit cooler around 6pm, we went outside but there were still no matches in play, so we went and sat on the grass underneath the giant scoreboard for another few hours. By now the weather was well and truly "playable" but still no matches - ridiculous. No one knew what the idea was and why they weren't starting - spectators and players alike were getting impatient and there were no announcements to tell us what was happening. FINALLY around 9pm, they got the matches underway, so we had effectively wasted 8 hours doing absolutely nothing.
We went and watched a bit of the match between Gaston Gaudio and Gilles Muller and had our dinner (hamburgers) while we were there. Then we went to see Dmitry Tursunov's match against Alexander Waske. The match had just started when my friend got a message from a friend in Holland to tell us that Fernando Verdasco's match against Paul-Henri Mathieu (that we thought was not going to be starting til late on one of the outside courts) had been moved to Vodafone and had already started! Thanks to the tournament organisers for letting everyone know! People on the other side of the world were being better informed than we were! I had always thought of the Australian Open as being the most well organised tournament, but this year, I have to say it was a real shambles and I was not impressed at all. I was not the only one to notice this...perhaps it is due to teething problems with the new management, since Paul McNamee resigned from the job last year, but either way, the disorganisation was very obvious. So anyway, we had to abandon Dima to go and see the match on Vodafone Arena. After getting past an ignorant staff member who was trying to tell me that Vodafone Arena was closed, we got in to the stadium. Normally, Vodafone Arena is so difficult to get into...you have to queue up for hours. Tonight there was not a soul...the entire stadium was empty except for about 10 fans, and the coaches and entourages of the 2 players. It was quite eerie to be sitting in this huge stadium that was completely empty! There was pin drop silence...very very weird atmosphere! The one good thing was that it was nice and COOL thanks to the airconditioning! We stayed for most of the match...Paulo was leading by 2 sets to love, and then I wanted to go back and see the end of Dmitry's match. By the time I got back there, it had already finished...but my other friends who had stayed there said he had been really really sweet after the match. As we were walking back to the car, my friend heard that Paulo had injured his ankle just a few points away from winning the match and had to be taken off in a wheelchair...so Verdasco had won! What cruel luck for Paulo!! By this time it was now 2am which means we had been at the tennis for 14 hours. We were hot and tired and finally got to bed around 3.30am!
