TENNIS AUSTRALIAN OPEN – Aussie triumph with Kyrgios winning a five-setter after Seppi misses a match point, Rafa and Berdych cruising. Masha to meet Genie in the quarters. But it’s all about the crowd in Melbourne From Melbourne Robbie Cappuccio
AO2015: Interviews, Results, Order of Play, Draws
First Sunday at the 105th Australian Open and definitely a family day. Don’t be fooled by an average age of around 35: that’s because of a number of kids aged 3 to 6 and grandparents in their seventies.
But why should kids go to the tennis? “because it’s fun”, “because there’s face painting”, “because I can get to see the players”. And so even outer courts, where the mixed doubles and the juniors tournaments are taking place, have their crowd cheering and asking for autographs to tomorrow’s champions. Wasn’t Nicky Kyrgios one of those boys a couple of years ago? Or Vika Azarenka a few years before, just to mention a couple.
There are the Hot-Shots courts, a program conceived by Tennis Australia to introduce children to tennis, and now taken up by a number of schools all over Australia. This means thousands of children playing more or less regularly. And guess what? More children means more probabilities of finding – if not the new Federer or Nadal – the new Hewitt or Rafter. Finally there’s a whole kids area in the square between the Rod Laver and Hisense arenas where they get their picture taken pretending to be on RLA, or play games and video-games of tennis and other activities of all sorts. Even Disney has made a deal with the Australian Open, introducing a sort of Disneyland within Hisense Arena in the last 3 days of the tournament before the night matches, which includes a Frozen based karaoke, a Neverland adventure and other themed kids zone with exhibitions based on popular movies.
Let’s move to played tennis now and women first. Bouchard wins but not without suffering against Romanian Begu 6-1 5-7 6-2 and asks the Genie Army to “practice more songs“. In the quarterfinals she’ll face Masha, who, despite having forgotten how to serve (45% first serve, and a handful of poor ball tosses), disposes of Shuai Peng 6-0 6-3. Do you see any of yourself in Genie? “I personally don’t know Genie very well. As a tennis player she’s a big competitor. She’s an aggressive player as well that likes to take the ball early and dictate points. From that perspective, yeah, definitely“.
Simona Halep flings her arms in the air as she reaches the quarterfinals for the 2nd year in a row, beating Wickmayer 6-4 6-2 and facing now Ekaterina Makarova who dispatched German Goerges in just over one hour.
In the men’s singles it takes just above 2 hours for Rafa to win over Kevin Anderson in straight sets 7-5 6-1 6-4. Despite being skeptical regarding his possibilities here, Rafa reaches the quarterfinals and is relaxed enough to smile to a ball kid who repositioned incorrectly (by a few millimiters) one of his water bottles which had fallen on the ground. He will now face Tomas Berdych who has been defeating for 17 consecutive times since 2006. We are waiting for a press release by the Czech who could sound like a déjà vu of 1980 “Nobody beats Tomas Berdych 18 times in a row”. By the way Berdych played Tomic and played strong and powerful winning 6-2 7-6 6-2. Tomic was expecting a tough match – “he hits so hard“- , but then said he was surprised by how strong Berdych started. Ah Bernie, make up your mind.
The night proposes a marathon between the local hero Nick Kyrgios and Andreas Seppi. The Italian, fresh from upsetting Roger Federer, up 2 sets to love, and owning the baseline, ends up losing 8-6 in the fifth. The young Aussie gun, supported by “an incredible crowd. Hisense Arena is now my favourite“, indulges in a number of selfies with screaming teenagers, and is now waiting for the Brit Andy Murray or Dimitrov, in case he beats the Scot. Looks like Andy is very Brit tonight though, showing sharpness and determination against Not-so-baby-anymore-Baby-Federer. So far 6-3 6-7 6-3 Murray.