AO 2015 - Day 1

Hello guys. The first day of the tournament. I arrived at around 9.30, half an hour before the gates opened and there was already a queue. They had some sort of ceremony of the steps to Rod Laver Area. Boris Becker and a ball girl carried the trophies up the stairs. News stations where filming the fans.

When they let us in I headed to Stefi’s practice. As usual she was hitting with Mandy Minella. Also on the court was her opponent, Parmentier who was just hitting with her coach. Nothing exciting happened apart from it starting off quite cool and then got hot quickly. I took some photos.

After the quick hit out they had to leave the court so that the first match could begin (this match eventually took 5 sets and it was a long wait for Stefi’s match).

I went inside Hisense Arena to watch Bencic v Görges. It’s great that they have upgraded MCA so that now you can get into HA with a grounds pass. Plus the stadium less empty when you don’t need to pay more to enter. Unfortunately for Belinda she didn’t play very well and Julia was fantastic so she won comfortably in the end.

Then I went back to the other side of the venue where they have the outside courts and man there were so many people. I was not prepared for that. In particular the line to get into Jordan Thompson’s match was about 30m long. Luckily I got a seat to the Coric-Chardy match. So Coric is a young Croatian guy who is another youngster to watch (the AO website also told me to watch Bencic).

I thought Berankis was about to win so I left that match before they finished. It turned out that Berankis would lose the 4^th set TB so I just went to sit in the shade and watched the end of the Ivanovic match on the big screen. I can’t believe she lost. Then Lisicki also lost. Seeds were falling all around me.

Finally time to see Stefi’s match. In the first set she came out with all guns blazing and quickly raced to win the first set in about 22 minutes or so. The second set Parmentier lifted her game and it was tight until Stefi got broken toward the end of the set. In the third Stefi served first and broke in the second game. At 4*-3 she was down 0-40 and ended up holding serve which was crucial. Throughout the whole match I didn’t have a feeling that she was going to lose and I would feel that way if Pauline had broken to level at 4 all. Thankfully that didn’t happen. I was so relieved that she won. It would be so amazing if she can beat Bouchard in round 3 – but we will just take it one match at a time. Caro Garcia is next.

After that match I went into a few matches and walked around a bit to see the end of Kerber’s tournament on the tv. So disappointing (she was another player I had in my fantasy team). I was going to see Kokkinakis-Gulbis but I couldn’t be bothered queueing and I wanted to eat so I left at around 7.15pm.