2013 Australian Open: Over… but never forgotten

A personal review of the 2013 Australian Open experience.

The year’s Australian Open was huge!

The daily attendances were huge.

And for me, even after attending the tournament for over twenty years, this was the biggest AO ever.

The lead up events

In the lead up to the Australian Open I went to the:

• AO Wildcard Play Offs,
• Taste of Tennis,
• adidas Mirror Court launch,
• Draw Ceremony,
• qualifying
• Sugarpova launch.

The number of sessions

AO 2013 was big due to the number of sessions I went to.

Eleven.

More than ever before.

AO 2013 was big due to the quality of tickets that I had, particularly due to great seats provided by @kiaaustralia and Grand Slam Tennis Tours. And thanks also go to very kind friends from Twitter.

AO 2013 was big due to the big matches; The Men’s Final, the Women’s Final, Murry v Federer semi-final, Federer v Tsonga quarter-final, Djokovic v Wawrinka in the fourth round and Simon v Monfils in the third round (mentioned for a different reason that the other matches!) to name a few.

AO 2013 had laughs. My favourite were from The Heard and the antics of Disproportionate Head Boy during Tomic’s matches in the first week.

Because I attended more sessions than usual I had more time to catch up with friends and family at Melbourne Park. Mum and dad, school friends, Melbourne friends, Twitter friends I’d met before and Twitter friends who I was happy to meet for the first time.

Two weeks of an Australian Open focussed world

It was two weeks of tennis tennis tennis. Blogging bloggging blogging. Tweeting tweeting tweeting.

With lots of friends and laughs in between… and even some exercise and a bit of work here and there.

Two weeks of getting home late, plugging the camera battery into the charger, plugging the iPhone in to the charger, getting the next days drinks cold, getting the next days’ tickets ready, checking for sunburn, checking the schedule and sleeping as much as possible before starting a fresh new AO day.

I’ve become as accustomised to walking at a leisurely pace with no sense of urgency to and from seats in Rod Laver Arena (like the rest of the crowd does), as I have to peering into windows of Kia AO cars to see if a tennis player is in the back.

Until tomorrow I talk tennis and pretty much tennis only. When an unwary friend or client asks me “how’s the tennis going” I can’t be stopped, a whole spiel of recent results leaves my lips before I realise they may have just been being polite.

Thank-yous are owing

As always thanks go to fabulous tweeps for the tweets, retweets, replies, chit chat and laughs.

I’d be lost without you.

And the biggest thanks go to @ballboy2012, who surpassed himself this year; writing blogs, taking photos, sorting photos, editing photos, uploading photos, getting coffees, going to the supermarket for supplies, keeping the household running and reminding me of the things I usually forget. And always making me laugh, especially when I started feeling busy and stressed.

On missing Rafa

I’ve been a tennis fan for a long time.

Long before Rafa was around.

So I’m not a tennis fan because of Rafa.

But for me, being a tennis fan is better because of him.

Much better.

Better due to his smile.

His energy.

His respect.

His skill.

His stamina.

His water bottles.

His biceps.

His Rafa-ness.

After months of planning how I would get AO tickets to whatever session he was scheduled to play, I missed Rafa a lot this AO and I know millions of others did too.

Plus I missed the Rafa Fan Circle on Twitter.

But Rafa will be back soon and, whatever happens, I’ll wait as long as it takes and be ecstatic the day I see him smile from a tennis court again.

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That’s about it for my Australian Open 2013 wrap up.

Thank you for reading my blog.

It is truly a labour of love and I always appreciate your feedback.

Until next time

Grand Slam Gal