The Australian Open Sucks Now

 

Back in 2019 there was some very cool stuff at the Australian Open (photo by TravellingFool.com)

I was pretty excited to be able to get to the Australian Open this year. I missed it in 2022 by a couple days so 2023 was definitely going to be my year to get back to the festivities and I was more then ready for it. I had such a good time the first time I went to the Australian Open in 2019 that I dragged my parents to the US Open in 2022. I'm not sure if Wimbledon does something similar but both the Australian Open and the US Open have a special ticket that you can purchase for grounds access.

The ground pass admits you into the tennis area where all of the stadiums and courts that the players use to practice or play early competitive rounds are held. It allows you to go to any of the practice courts and enjoy the specialty drinks and foods that are sold by different vendors as well as go shopping for everything tennis. Sponsors of the event usually have stalls selling their wares as well which can be a fun way to check out the latest shoes from Adidas or pick up some funky socks.

My first trip to the Australian Open in 2019 was magical.It was like being in a tennis themed amusement park. I drank my way through the park enjoying the warm sun and watching the matches on the big television screens. Each of the vendors had such unique designs and decorations, offering a different vibe in each booth area with food trucks interspersed between the alcohol vendors. There weren't too many other people there so it felt peaceful to sip my Aperol spritz and watch the tennis as a few groups sat at the picnic tables in another booth nearby chatting. There was an announcement in the afternoon asking people to go into the Rod Laver arena to watch the Australian duos play in the final (and they won!). It was so epic chanting and cheering with everyone and it was followed up by the best vibes at a concert in the park next door.

On my second trip this year (2024) I was so excited. I was ready to live whatever the updated version of the epic adventure I had in 2019 was. Maybe I had too much fun that first year and it was a blip. The US Open was pretty great but not as good as my first trip to the AO. It honestly could be just me chasing the joy of an epic adventure, wanting to do it again. But the Australian Open was such an overall disappointment that I'm not sure if I would go again or not.

Let's start with getting there. The tram provides easy access to the Rod Laver Arena (after a bit of a walk) or you can walk up from the Yarra River where the botanical gardens meets the AIA Center. There was a new entrance I noticed from my usual perch on the lawn in front of the rowing clubs in Southbank so you could even walk in right from Flinders into the Kids Zone then take the long walk into the main festival grounds. How did I get there? Well. I bought an UberOne pass because I had been getting a lot of takeout and everything has a delivery fee unless you have it. 

UberOne happened to send me a push notification at the beginning of the second week of the tournament and told me I could get a free ride to the US Open since I live close to the stadium. So I woke up, got dressed, put on lots of sunscreen then opened my phone and ten minutes later a sick looking Kia SUV pulled up to pick me up. I got in and the interior was gorgeous! Honestly the free ride in the Kia EV9 GT-Line all electric 7-Seat SUV to the Australian Open did more to convince me that when I eventually need to buy or lease a car I'm going to spend the money for that one. The backseat was so comfortable and the double moon roof was such a vibe. The coolest part was seeing how the sideview mirrors worked because the car doesn't have any. Instead of a domed mirror at the end of the plastic arm of the sideview mirror it was a small square camera. And inside the vehicle on the passenger and drivers side were these 4-inch (roughly) TV screens. The part that I liked from the functional perspective of the car was that the controls for the radio and speakers were really straight forward. Not this mess of nested menus and different interfaces. I even asked the driver how he liked it and he said it was nice to drive around the city all day. That ride was only like 10 minutes but it really convinced me that this was the EV of my dreams. To be honest the booth that they had at the Australian Open made the car seem so uncool. They would've been better off with the cute slate blue AO themed version they used with Uber.

I arrived at about 11am on the Wednesday of the final week of the event and I noticed in the Instagram posts from friends who went that in all of their photos there were tons of people in the crowd. So I wanted to be there as early as possible to get a chance to check out the whole event and see what was going on before I picked a spot to hang out later in the afternoon when it would inevitably start to get more crowded.

This year each section of the tennis center was named and there were lots of color coded maps around to tell you which one you were in. I started off in the "Grand Slam Oval" area. Before you even scanned your ticket there were multiple sunscreen stations where you could slather up. Inside there were sunscreen stations in each section where you could reapply as well and there were lots of shaded seating areas. This was a huge change from my first visit where there was almost no shade whatsoever. 

There were areas of food and then areas of drinks but there didn't seem to be many non-food sponsors this year. Chemist Warehouse had one of the smartest booths where they sold everything you could need on a day out in a very cold air conditioned box. Dunlop had their usual tennis ball filled room for IG worthy photos and there was an Infosys booth that I'm not sure what they had and the Kia display that I mentioned earlier. There wasn't anything that fun and I found out why when I eventually wandered my way over the foot bridge to the other side of the park and saw the Kid Zone. The Kid Zone was insane with the amount of children in there. I learned from a guy I was chatting with later in the evening that all of the activities in the Kid Zone have to be booked well in advance so if you didn't there isn't really anything to do in there. If you're like the guy I was talking to you didn't notice that bookings were required and show up only to have a very disappointed kid.

The food and drink options were interesting. Each drink provider in the venue had their own area of seating and tables in their bright brand colors with a bar selling their specialty drink of the event. They were also the only drinks available for sale from the food vendors. The branded bars themselves were such a bore. Like sitting in the middle of a 3-dimensional billboard. Each one had an "Instagram worthy" posing area too which sat empty more often then not. So they were just these huge pointless sculptures taking up space. I will say that Aperol had the smartest looking one - a deep red colored 2-person high top table on a matching deep red backdrop. Otherwise they were treated like awkwardly arranged open seating with people sitting on any moveable object they could find because it was so jam packed. 

By 1pm it was already crowded. I tried to see if I could get into the stadium to see a game since the general admission ticket I purchased included open seating in the arena (it was very confusing with multiple levels of general admission tickets in general) and there were so many people sitting on the floor inside and just hanging out that I knew any general seating was long gone. At 5pm it was so uncomfortably crowded and people started sitting on the ground. People yelling at each other across the area and packs of young people posing to take huge group photos. The ground unfortunately was also made of dead grass and with such an intense amount of foot traffic it kicked up a layer of disintegrating grass that took me two showers to get off my body and left me coughing up dust for two weeks.

At the end of the day it was a good time but I could've done all the same things I did at the Australian Open on a rooftop bar anywhere else in Melbourne and not walked away with a cough at the end.