The first weekend of the Australian Open coincided with the Australia Day long weekend this year. How very Australian it was to have a barbie and watch sports on the telly, or better still attend the tennis in person.
Even though there are more restaurants that have set up pop up shops and more retail shops this year, we hardly had time to check them out because this year I just wanted to watch some tennis and not be side tracked!
We queued up for about 45 minutes in the sun to get into 1573 court to watch Ash Barty play women's doubles. It was very hot, and we were told to expect one to one and a half hour's wait but we figured if we were to move to another court we would just end up waiting for longer. So when we did get a seat, we were just content to continue watching the next match as well where Jamie Murray played in the men's doubles.
We also went to the practice courts but did not see anyone we knew there so moved on quickly to the AO store before heading home.
I enjoyed watching the tennis this year as we managed to get a seat and watch some interesting games, and because it was not too hot. The smoke haze which saw some players struggling to breathe on the opening day and the bush fires were still very much at the front of mind but they had dissipated somewhat with the top temperature being at low 20's on the weekend. The torrential rain a few days before had also cleared the haze.
It is interesting to know that construction workers are protected by union rules to be able to stop work once the temperature reaches 35 degrees but no such rules are in place to protect tennis players who arguably have to exert more effort in their matches under direct sun. While there is a heat policy called the 'heat stress scale' which rates playing conditions from 1 to 5 as measured by a combination of factors being heat, humidity, radiant heat and wind speed but even if it reached 5 on the scale, play continues. Such is the occupational hazards of being a tennis player!
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