Tennis

Yesterday I met up with a Dutch girl called Sylvia who I made friends with when visiting Jen and Rich for dinner a couple of days ago. We decided to go down to federation square and watch the Australian open tennis tournament, which was being hosted in Melbourne.

Federation square is a lovley big sand stone bricked square in the centre of town which can hold 10,000 people. They have erected a huge tv and loads of deck chairs for people to watch the tennis on. So we got ourselves a spot and settled down to watch a few games. It was really enjoyable and a great atmosphere to be in. The cherry on the cake, however, was that Kia (the main sponsors of the tournament were handing out free tickets to the next days tournament! So I lept on one of the Kia ladies and bagged us five free tickets for the Australian open! 

The next day I was up early and popped down to the bar where I found my friend Brandon I met a few days ago. He was well up for going to the open and I gave my last ticket -Sylvia took two- to the first person to put their hand up when I announced I had a spare in the middle of the bar. The lucky winner was Louis!

So Brandon and I made our way down to the Olympic park, where the open was taking place. We planned our day around seeing the Williams sisters take on the world 13 seeds on show court two. This entailed sitting in the near 40 degree heat watching the games before hand to make sure we got a decent spot under a little bit of fabric mesh to give us some shade. On the plus side we saw, or rather heard, some fantastic grunting and whining in the women's singles!

Three hours later out strolled the Williams sisters to a round of... Bewildered silence... They had magically transformed into two slender Hispanic women who got absolutely annihilated. 

It turns out the sisters pulled out of the competition as Serena was playing earlier that morning. I was absolutely gutted as we had missed a really good Aussie men's doubles match which sounded like a great atmosphere. After the disappointment and were met by Louis and her boyfriend we all headed into the Margret court arena for two really great games of tennis.

After eight hours of solid tennis and two shock rainfalls halting play Brandon and I headed on home. Today was one of the best sporting spectacles I have been to for the sport alone and I am really looking forward to going to Wimbledon when I get home. I also hope Makoto doesn't mind picking up a racket so we can have a few games down hove park.

Great day