Monday 19th was the first day of Australian Open 2009! :)

It was a scorcher of a day and being the bright pair we are, we chose seats with no shade! lol. We did however come prepared, with suncream, hat, sunglasses, soft drinks and a free promotional fan each made of plastic that got so hot the handles began to melt! lol!

We had tickets to get into the Hisense arena in the morning and the first game we saw was Ana Ivanovic seeded 5 vs Julia Goerges which started at 11am! I was quite excited to see Ana, as I knew she was famously a great player! However, she had split from her coach at the beginning of the season and didn't play as well as I had hoped, but she did win! :)

The second match was played by Juan Martin Del Potro, seeded number 8 vs Mischa Zverev and Potro won 6-3 6-4 6-2.

The third match was played by Jelena Dokic vs Tamira Paszek. There was quite an atmosphere inside the arena, as Dokic was certainly the favourite! We didn't know anything about her at the time, but we soon learned, as she was constantly shown on Australian T.V.

She is an Australian citizen, but is originally from Croatia and reached as high as seed number 4 in 2002! Sadly, because of family difficulties, mainly to do with her alcoholic father, she dropped down the rankings, but she is now making a come back! So you can imagine how excited everyone was as they watched what they called 'an Australian fairytale'. I managed to get fixed to the T.V whenever she was on :) lol

Final match was played by Marat Safin, seeded number 26 vs Ivan Navarro and Safin won 6-3 6-3 6-4.

We also had tickets for the evening of the 20th in the Rod Laver arena, the night Rafael Nadal played and it was a very popular evening indeed!

There was a ladies match first, Samantha Stosur vs Klara Zakopalova, Stosur won 7-6(5) 7-6(0).

Finally the match we had all been waiting for! Everyone cheered as Nadal entered the court. Quite quickly the players began to warm up and Nadal's choise of outfit seemed to be the topic of conversation on radio aofm, which we were listening to on Ian's mobile phone. He wasn't wearing his usual kit! That normally consists of a vest and below the knee shorts, instead he was wearing a t-shirt and SLIGHTLY shorter shorts!

Nadal and the other player Christophe Rochus had finished rallying and began to practice their serves. We couldn't help but notice the power Nadal hit the balls across the court, sometimes near missing the ball boys! lol It remained at that intensity during the match, as the balls were shooting by Christophe, he didn't appear to really stand a chance!

16 minutes into the match it was 5-0 to Nadal! and 19 minutes later Nadal had won the 1st set!

During the break one of the commentators, an english man with a very posh accent made an observation about the weather. Apparently it had been 40 oC in the day in Melbourne and at 22:20 it was 24oC, which he said would be a pleasant summer afternoon in England. I can't imagine what it would have been like for the players competing during the day in that heat!

The break was over, the second set had began and the level of play was still the same. Nadal scored an ace with a ball moving at the speed of 198 kph!

Commentators "He wants an early night" lol

Even though the result seemed pretty obvious, it wasn't because Christophe was a bad player, he was actually very good. A female aussie commentator said:

"He's doing nothing wrong!" and the English man replied with "You don't need to do anything wrong when you are playing Rafael, he just eats you up!"

35 mins in and Christophe had finally won his first game point! The crowd cheered unbelievebly loud, Christophe couldn't hide his emotion either as he laughed and couldn't stop smiling as he had a sip of water, the commentators said

" I'm surprised he didn't take a swig of gin!"LOL

Nadal won 6-0 6-2 6-2, but it wasn't just Nadal who played some impressive shots, Christophe did too and they were replayed on the T.V highlights.

Overall it was a shame not to see Andy Murray and Roger Federer, but we did witness the world number 1 and the final match we saw made it a very memorable experience indeed. :)