Tennis fever!

Remember how I said I went to the Australian Open, took pictures, and planned to blog about it?
I wasn't just blowin' smoke up your ass!

On the 5th day of the Open, I finished work early and headed down to Melbourne Park in the blazing heat to see me some tennis! The Open is immensely popular here, and everyone gets tennis fever during this fortnight in January. Since one can get inexpensive grounds passes (which allow entry to all courts except centre court) people from Melbourne and the rest of the world flock to the tournament.

I arrived at the Open at about 3:30pm. I had missed a couple of the early matches (which started at 11am), but there were still plenty of men's, women's, and doubles matches scheduled for the day. First, I wandered around the grounds, checking out all the sponsor's booths giving out free stuff. Apparently Garnier was giving out makeovers and full size bottles of their products, but the queue was about 3 hours long, so I couldn't be bothered to do that.

As I wandered about, I noticed that while there were many of tennis fans and much tennis memorbilia around, no actual tennis was being played. It turned out that all the games were delayed on account of extreme heat (click here to see the Extreme Heat policy).

Most of the games were only delayed 20-30 minutes, so I decided that the first match on my agenda would be Thomas Johannson (Sweden) vs. Giles Simon (France).

While we were all waiting for the game to start, the Swedish fans in the crowd kept us all entertained with rounds of Swedish cheers. I have no idea what any of them were saying, but their enthusiasm and antics kept me smiling!



You can see on the scoreboard the "delayed due to extreme heat" message. EXTREME!!!!

As the weather started cooling off, people started to fill up the seats for the game.



Note the ominous looking clouds on the right side of the sky...

The temperature ultimately fell, and the referee and ball kids started to arrive on the court. Excitement was building for the game to start, and the Swedes had embarked on more intense cheering in anticipation of Johannson's entrance. You could feel the tension in the air all around us, building and building, until BOOM!

The heavens opened up and it started pouring rain! The temperature drop was due to impending thunderstorms. So, we all left the court and took refuge in the covered beer tent across the way and waited out the storm.



The rain subsided, and a whole team of people came out to dry the court.



Once the court was dry, the match commenced. Unfortuneately, during the 2nd game, the rain started up again. This time the organizers decided it would be best to move the show indoors.

So, the game of tennis I sat down to watch at 4:30pm actually began at 9pm. I got home a little after 11pm, and the last games of the night were still being played!

Even with the heat and rain, it was a great time. There were plenty of people to watch, interesting shopping, and beer to drink. I learned about Tennis, a game I have never really watched or played before, and saw how exciting the matches can be. I think if I have the opportunity to attend the Open again, I will definitely devote more than one afternoon to the events, and get tickets for centre court (which are also fairly inexpensive early in the tournament).

I would also like to find a good cheer for Americans to have to pass the time while waiting for matches to begin. The Swedes had a couple of different cheers with multiple parts chanted by different groups of people in the crowd. The Aussies had their "Aussie Aussie Aussie" "Oy Oy Oy" chants. But for us Americans?

Nothing.

I mean, I guess there is the old "U S A! U S A!" chant, but that's rather boring, isn't it?