In January, the winners of the ACT B-grade Win a Wildcard events had the opportunity to play at Melbourne Park during the Australian Open. The pairings of Asheek Khan/Penny Phung and Relja Cvjeticanin/Marlene Reichel have written about their Australian Open experience. Win a Wildcard will be back this year with qualifying events to take place in November & December across Australia.
Penny
We were given official Australian Open player’s passes, use and access to the Margaret Court Arena player’s change rooms, a behind-the-scenes tour of Rod Laver Arena, had John Fitzgerald come and give us a talk in the player press conference room, had morning tea at the player’s café and were given some official Australian Open merchandise.
The tour of Rod Laver Arena was pretty special, but doing the ‘Walk of Champions’ and then seeing Pat Rafter having a hit on court were probably the highlights.
We were playing on courts 14 and 15, and had about 30 family and friends along to watch us.We had a chair umpire, linesmen and ball kids. It was such a new, strange experience for us, and playing the new ‘Fast4’ format meant we had very little time to settle down and try to get used to our surroundings. We lost our first two matches, before bouncing back for the 3rd winning in a tiebreak to finish on a high note.
We of course missed out on the semi-finals and ended up placing 7th of 9 teams, which wasn’t quite as well as we were hoping to do, but Asheek did have something in mind to take my mind off our less than impressive Australian Open debut…
Asheek:
After our last match, once our opponents and the officials had made their way off the court and it was just us, our family and friends left, I called everyone together. I thanked them for coming to share our special day with us, got down on one knee and asked Penny to marry me. Penny retreated three or four steps backwards in complete shock, but did eventually say yes (her first response was a John McEnroe-esque “are you serious?!”). To put the cherry on top of an already incredible day, we were then given tickets to the women’s final that night.
We would encourage everyone to get involved in the Win a Wildcard competition. We’ve had an unforgettable experience and who knows, you could too!
Relja & Marlene
We arrived at 9am on the final Saturday of the main tournament and were given a tour of the grounds. We went under Rod Laver Arena and go to walk on the red carpet that the pros walk on when they enter Rod Laver Arena before a big match. We were then given our players passes, which gave us access to everywhere the pros have access to. We used the lockers and player warm-up areas in Margaret Court Arena, which were truly world class. We ate at the Player’s cafe that morning as Pat Rafter walked past and doubles champions Simone Bolelli and Fabio Fognini were having breakfast at the table next to us. Walking around the grounds there were so many tennis personalities, coaches, players, reporters, wives/girlfriends, entourages, etc. We had a meet and greet with Aussie tennis great and TV commentator John “Fitzy” Fitzgerald. He was such a nice guy – so experienced and really happy to spend time chatting with all of us.
Our tournament was held from 12-4pm that day. It was an intense round-robin tournament using the new “Fast4” format where the winner is the first to 4 games. Competition was tough and unfortunately we didn’t make it to the semi-finals which were held later in the afternoon. I was on my way to the locker room and who should I see but Jim Courier interviewing Maria Sharapova in the players stretching area under Margaret Court Arena. So what else to do other than sit down next to Maria and have a stretch myself. She was warming up for her women’s final and I was cooling down after our tournament. They both looked at me like “who’s this guy?” I just smiled while I did a few lazy stretches.
It was great watching Serena and Maria battle it out and to witness history as Serena captured her 19th singles grand slam title. Both women played so well and they hit the ball so hard and fast (and really accurately).
And that was our awesome experience playing tennis at the Australian Open!
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