Hit for Haiti

Wow - what a special afternoon!
We got home last night and turned on the TV just in time to see Roger Federer announce that he had spear-headed a fund-raiser for the Haitian earthquake victims - Hit for Haiti. In 24 hours, he (and the Melbourne tennis community) managed to put together a demonstration tennis match which was played this afternoon, the day before the opening day of the Australian Open Tennis Tournament. For $10 a head, we got some really good tennis entertainment - very light-hearted and enjoyable. Eight players donated their time to play a “match” - but it was fun, not competition. I just don’t know how they managed to organize it in such short order, but we got to the Rod Laver Stadium about 1 ½ hours before it was due to start, bought our tickets and were through the door within about 45 minutes. I’m not sure how many people the stadium seats, but it was packed which is pretty incredible when you consider the short time line. Apart from Federer, Nadal, Roddick, Hewitt, Djokovich, Serena Williams, Kim Cleisters and Sam Stosur donated their time and put on some very entertaining tennis. In case you can’t recognize them in the pictures, Roddick is wearing black, Rafa had white shorts and a blue shirt, Hewitt was in a yellow shirt, Federer was turquoise, Djokovic was grey, Serena was yellow, Kim was white and Sam was orange. The picture of Rafa and Djokovich bumping chests came after a particularly fast point! They were all wearing microphones and there was a lot of good natured bantering and teasing going on between them the whole time. At one point, there were 6 players on court at once! It was all so relaxed and SUCH good entertainment! Some of the tennis at net was quite incredible. The weather was pretty iffy, so they had the roof closed, so we were cosy and warm, and we managed to get pretty good seats. They raised about $200,000 which included some individual donations from players (Maria Sharapova threw in $10,000) as well as some of the tennis organizations, and many of the players have agreed to donate their rackets for auction to raise more money. We have grounds tickets for opening day tomorrow, but this afternoon was so unexpected and enjoyable, I thought it deserved its own blog entry!