Melbourne | Australia :: Australian Open Tennis

We were lucky enough to secure some awesome tickets for the opening week of the 2010 Australian Open, held here in Melbourne Park. Perfect weather, rowdy Aussie crowds and dramatic tennis filled few of our days in this great city. We scored great up close and personal seats (the ushers are not nearly as strict as back home) and captured some amazing shots of our favorite players! Go Federer!

Ground Passes: $29 per day (11am to last match of the day), access to all courts except Rod Laver Arena (center court) and Hisense Arena

Rod Laver Passes: $52.50 for each the day session or night session; access to all other courts except Hisense Arena. Matches played here are also televised on the big screen outside the arena in the beer gardens!

Hisense Arena Passes: $52.50 for each the day session or night session; access to all other courts except Rod Laver Arena

Eats: All sorts of food stands are available within the grounds at a (really) inflated price, but you can bring in a small cooler (no glass) full of snacks and drinks!

Schedule: The next day’s schedule (court times and players) is not posted until 6pm, which makes difficult to plan your day or decide if you want to buy day or night session tickets.

As usual, the big draw for spectators were Federer and Nadal. Everyone wanted to see these guys play their matches! In the end, it was worth it, to watch these masters play their game, creating effortlessly the magic we love to see!

Of course we had to cheer on our players from home, the good old US of A! Terry HAD to see Roddick and really went crazy giving him cheers from the crowd. It was his first major tennis event, and after each cheer, would look around nervously to ensure some form of etiquette wasn’t violated, with an express ejection following.

Donald Young, a resident of Atlanta, was even playing. It felt wonderful to route for our countrymen, especially in a foreign land. Your nationalism really shines in those situations.

Here’s Manali posing from one of our matches at Rod Laver Arena, the center court.

Even though he’s Australian, he was once world number one, and Leyton played a good match!

After enough Australian bravado to last for a couple of weeks, we swung back over to watch Venus Williams play center court. It is amazing to watch how quick Venus shuffles her feet when she’s moving along that baseline. A master at work!

We even saw an oldie but goodie, in the tennis world anyway, the German, Tommy Haas.

THE hardest match to get into when we were there, was a Williams doubles match. We waited about 50 minutes, and that’s a lot, in the midday sun to get into Margaret Court to watch the match. Go team Williams!

When we decided enough was enough, we caught any of the remaining good matches on the big screen in Federation Square, in downtown Melbourne. It was the place to be during the tournament, and it didn’t hurt that they had free wireless.