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Australian Open 2018: The Matches, Memories and Meaningful Moments

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Here’s my annual wrap-up article for the Australian Open, which yet again delivered huge matches and huge crowds plus many memories and meaningful moments.

The Australian Open is my favourite grand slam tournament

I was first went in 1989, just after the tournament moved from Kooyong to Melbourne Park. I’ve been going regularly ever since. It’s my home slam and there are a lot of things that I love about it. I love how the city of Melbourne gets involved with the tournament. I love the true tennis fans that visit Melbourne to attend. I love the tough matches, the tournament experience, the colour, the sponsor activities and the engagement with fans.

Having said all that, I’ve seen a lot of changes to the tournament over the years and generally they improve the fan experience. But this year, while there was still a lot to love and so many great tennis matches to enjoy, the bigger crowds, failure of the App in the early days, ever increasing ticket prices and other small changes that detracted from my previous experience made me hope that AO will level out with crowd numbers and ticket prices in 2019 and stop pushing for increases.

Australian Open 2018 was hot

Super hot. Not that the Aus Open hasn’t been played in super hot conditions in previous years. But Melbourne generally has dry heat whereas this year humidity was higher so it felt hotter (to me anyway!). It was so hot to even sit in the stands in un-shaded seats that I can’t even imagine the hot-ness on court that the players experience.

Read the Australian Open information on the Extreme Heat Policy.

Important to note is:

A roof will only be closed because of extreme heat if a decision has been made by the referee to suspend the completion or commencement of matches on the outside courts.

This means that once it’s decided that a roof will be closed then play needs to be suspended on outside courts. Which means that all the ground pass holders will have no matches to watch until play resumes on outside courts.

While it does seem that the wet bulb conditions for Sunday night’s Men’s Final met the conditions for closing the roof, the temperature was lower than required (please correct me if I’m wrong). Regardless, if it was the umpire’s decision to close the roof, I wish the ladies had been given the option to play with the roof closed for their final on Saturday. Especially given that Simona Halep spent four hours in hospital due to dehydration after the match.

Australian Open 2018 was crowded

Really crowded. The Aus Open is known to break attendance records each year and this year was no exception.

And that’s only the day session, nearly 25,000 more people came in for the evening sessions in Rod Laver Arena and Margaret Court Arena bringing the day’s attendance to over 87,000.

Crowd at the practice courts

While improvements are always made to the grounds and entry areas, the available space doesn’t get significantly bigger which means more people are present in the same space. So queues are longer for food, drinks, merchandise and toilets, and getting seats for matches on outside courts and practice sessions gets harder. I love the practice courts but couldn’t see Rafa or Roger practice on Day 1 because the crowds were too big.

Surely soon the number of tickets sold will be limited and the maximum crowd size capped to give those that do attend the best possible chance of having a good experience.

As a minor point, adding queuing ropes near the court entry when popular players are practicing would make this area a lot more orderly, particularly for Court 16. From what I’ve heard from friends queuing ropes would also be useful for the outside courts when popular players are playing. And security people who control the queues. I won’t even go into my opinions about the inadequate pass-out system in Hisense Arena.

Enjoying the lack of crowds during the day on Day 13

Technology fails

In past years the Australian Open App has been the ‘go-to’ place for fans around the world to keep up with the schedule, live scores and other news.

With this year’s Aus Open app failing during the first few days of the tournament, combined with crashes of the website, a lot of fans were frustrated by lack of information. Even when the App was working it was so much harder to find information at a glance than with the old App. A lot of scrolling was needed to see information that used to be easily found on one screen (this is my personal opinion which I know many other fans share.)

We turned to Google to get live scores, which were also hard to find around the grounds and weren’t shown on the big screens in Hisense Arena during the change of ends like in previous years.

On the plus I did quite like the new AO Fan Bot on Facebook Messenger that popped up to offer information and promote competitions.

Around the grounds

New fancy bars and restaurants were added around the grounds and Grand Slam Oval looked great. I think having areas for each of the Grand Slam cities really works and there are lots of different food, drink and fancy seating area options to choose from. Kids activities were moved to a new area which used to be the Rod Laver Arena entrance. I didn’t go there but looked like a lot of fun activities were available to promote tennis to kids.

View of the Practice Courts from the viewing deck

Things heard way too often during AO2018

  • Question to Rafa: “Where is Uncle Toni?” Rafa’s answer: (Say it with me!) Uncle Toni is still my uncle, he is in Mallorca looking after the Rafael Nadal Academy
  • Yes, Federer is 36 and his is the oldest man ever to {insert details of tennis milestone}
  • And yes, we know that both Wozniaki and Halep faced match points on the way to the women’s final.

Rafa Practicing

The great Women’s matches

There were a lot of great matches during this AO, with the women shining brightly.

I’m hoping to go to the WTA Finals in Singapore in October and based on the matches from AO, I’m already looking forward to it.

  • Wozniaki d Halep in the women’s final
  • Halep d Kerber in the women’s semifinal
  • Kerber d Hsieh (honestly I could watch tennis like that from Hsieh all day)
  • Halep d Davis
  • Mertens d Svitolina
  • Wozniaki d Fett
  • Hsieh d Muguruza
  • Kerber d Sharapova (and the big match that wasn’t)
  • Petkovic d Kvitova
  • Kumkhum d Bencic
  • Bencic d Venus Williams

I’m sure I missed some, particularly from the first week when there was so much going on. Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Angie Kerber

The great Men’s matches

  • Chung d Djokovic
  • Nadal d Schwartzman
  • Dimitrov d Kyrgios
  • Edmund d Seppi
  • Kyrgios d Tsonga
  • Chung d Zverev
  • Tsonga d Shapovolov
  • Marterer d Verdasco
  • Edmund d Anderson
  • Berdych d Del Potro (and generally how well Berdych was playing)
  • Lacko d Raonic

Federer practicing

Djokovic practicing

Del Potro practicing

Meaningful moments (the good, the bad and the ugly)

There’s been a lot of memories made during AO2018. Here’s my list, in no particular order.

  • Wozniaki’s first grand slam win
  • Runner-up Halep’s massive effort and success during the whole tournament
  • Darren Cahill and generally what a great, supportive coach he is to Halep
  • Federer defending his title, winning his 20th grand slam title and 6th Australian Open
  • Cilic making it through to the final
  • The roof being closed for the Men’s Final
  • Rafa retiring in the fifth set in the quarterfinal v Cilic. Fortunately he expects to be playing again in three weeks.
  • Sleeveless Rafa returns
  • Wawrinka’s return after six months
  • Djokovic returns but his play compromised by his elbow. He’s reassessing his options to improve the injury.
  • Del Potro’s return
  • A tennis player named Tennys
  • Tennys and his views
  • This is how you pronounce Shapovolov. Not Sharapov-Alov or Sharapova-Lov
  • The heat during Djokovic v Monfils
  • Will Smith attending Kygios v Tsonga
  • Will Ferrell interviewing Federer and McEnroe
  • So many Americans going out in the first round
  • The fight Estrella Burgos put up to be defeated by Nadal 6-1, 6-1, 6-1. And that respectful hug after the match
  • Harrison v Sela, during which the crowd sounded like is was a Davis Cup match
  • Alex De Minaur’s great run in Brisbane and Sydney (and I’m so glad Australia has a new, down-to-earth, talented super star in the making)
  • Moving Ash Barty’s middle Saturday match from RLA to MCA with no announcement made to ticket holders in RLA
  • Dylan Alcott winning the quad wheelchair singles title
  • Jim Courier’s interviews with Federer
  • Hyeon Chung showing his potential to become a future super star
  • Jelena Dokic’s commentary for Channel 7
  • Wozniaki’s tweener
  • The Nike pink & black liquorice all-sorts outfits, seen in varying combos
  • Naomi Osaka’s post match interview after defeating Barty
  • 15 year old Marta Kostyuk reaching the third round
  • Mackenzie McDonald and his awesome performance against Dimitrov, eventually losing in five
  • Vandeweghe waiting for a banana
  • Maria playing Sharapova

Alex De Minaur

  • Tennis Hot Shot Ruby looking at herself on the big screen during the women’s trophy ceremony

My personal experience

It was a really nice Australian Open from my perspective. I only went to five sessions and didn’t blog much this year. Instead I spent more time focusing on the matches I was watching, rather than processing photos and writing articles at the same time like I usually do.

I also spent time with local and overseas based friends and family at the grounds. And to be honest, I got way more sleep than usual (yep, I know that #SleepIsForTheWeak).

The information in this articles is based on my opinions and knowledge and I’m happy to hear your opinions in the comments below on anything that I missed.

As for what’s next for me, stay tuned, I’m hoping to visit a lot more overseas tournaments this year than in 2017 (when overseas tournaments equalled zero!).

Until next time

Grand Slam Gal