The genuine magnetism of the Australian Open is that it’s the biggest global sporting event that comes here every year. Outside the Formula 1 grand prix, a FIFA World Cup or an Olympiad, Australians don’t get to see many truly international sports.
As a gift from history, hosting one of the four grand slam events is a fragile privilege. It’s not guaranteed. It’s under ever-growing threat from ambitious and cashed-up rivals. It has to earn its place in a way the other three grand slams don’t. This challenge helps make sense of all the quirks of the Open that bring out the best and worst of us under a global microscope.
Collectively, Australians support the Open with their feet and their wallets. By day 11 of this year’s event, crowd numbers had exceeded 1 million. According to the federal ministry of sport, records have been set every day, with nearly 100,000 ticket buyers in the seats on some days and tens of thousands more in the Melbourne Park precinct.
It’s an impressive number with a flipside. If the Open’s “fan engagement” has to keep growing, under pressure to maintain its “relevance”, then it has to expand to also engage the pissheads, airheads, cokeheads, dickheads and meatheads in its democratic melting pot.
Branding-wise, this makes it the “Happy Open”, but as we’ve seen, one fan’s happiness is another fan’s “Oi oi oi” as a player is about to serve. One fan’s respectful “quiet please” is another fan’s chance to make a goose of themselves. If the Open is to continue its fragile grasp of “relevance”, it needs all types.
Novak Djokovic embraces the role of pantomime villain.Credit: Getty Images
If the Open were a fishbowl event like, say, the AFL, its administrators would have lost their jobs for any one of their failures in recent years, from the major (the Novak Djokovic COVID fiasco of 2022) to the relatively minor (the epic length of finals-night speeches that had Djokovic and Rafael Nadal nearly collapsing in exhaustion, not even given chairs, in 2012; or Daniil Medvedev mouthing “boring” while the speeches dragged on in 2021).
In a self-scrutinising localised sport, accountability would have been demanded. But in the global context, these and other embarrassments don’t reach the threshold of visibility because they’re much the same as they are everywhere else. We’ve had to learn to put up with world’s best practice, as incompetent as it sometimes seems.
The big threat to the Open is where the global stars have to learn to put up with us. It’s also why officials rush to throw cold water on controversies and bend over backwards to keep the players happy.
Danielle Collins taunts the Australian crowd following her win over Destanee Aiava.Credit: AP
At least three high-profile players have objected to how they are treated by Australian crowds and media. American Danielle Collins didn’t take kindly to Australians behaving like a footy crowd when she was playing Destanee Aiava. Djokovic got up on his hind legs and demanded an apology from a TV journalist making some limp fun of Serbian spectators.
America’s Ben Shelton thought some post-game courtside questions, inoffensive in an Australian context, were “disrespectful”. The Melbourne January heat is annually disrespectful. Umpires judging let calls gets up players’ noses. There is doubtless much more, behind the scenes, that players don’t like, and in response the Open is led into a maze of compromises.
Crowd behaviour is reportedly worse at the US Open, but there’s no threat to the US Open’s grand slam status. The physical drain on athletes can be worse at Roland Garros, but its legitimacy is beyond question. It rains at Wimbledon – it’s in England – and only the outliers prefer grass, but Wimbledon is Wimbledon.
The Australian Open must keep proving itself. We forget that “grand slam” status is an agreed fiction between players, spectators and administrators. Australia’s place in the four derives from tennis pre-history. There’s nothing inevitable about it, and from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, its standing seemed doomed. Overseas players hated the pre-Christmas timeslot and stayed away. Australia was lucky if it could attract a headliner or two. Our own glory days were fading like the Kooyong grass.
Ben Shelton questioned the respect shown to him and other players by the media at the tournament.Credit: AP
If there were a China or Qatar or Saudi Arabia offering untold treasure to be the “fourth slam” at that time, chances are they would have got it, and by now the tennis Australian Open would have as much star power as the Australian Open in golf. A concerted effort in the late 1980s retrieved the Open, and isn’t taken for granted. The result is an uneasy mix of cultural cringe and cultural adaptation. Australia bends over backwards to indulge the pissheads et al off the court and the demanding personalities on the court. The TV broadcasters have to be gratified and controlled simultaneously. Traditionalists have to be given what they want (great tennis) and also what they don’t want (people who turn up for something other than tennis). It’s a fine balance, and each year the Open stretches itself further to accommodate conflicting interests.
In his relationship with the Open, Djokovic personifies all of these tensions. Djokovic champions the Open, while also being its greatest champion. His career record needs the Australian Open to retain its prestige. So he gets to be the boss. With the stewards of the Open sucking up to him, he expects everyone else to do the same. The Open itself – and, through its apologies for offending his dignity, the broadcaster – are locked in this uncomfortable alliance. Even if many viewers are watching to see him lose, they’re still watching.
It’s impossible to predict where the Australian Open will stand in 10 ro 20 years. It’s a deeply compromised event now, but those compromises are arguably necessary to sustain its growth and hold on to its standing. Beijing and the oil states will escalate their challenge with the lures of climate control, six-star facilities for all, well-behaved crowds, broadcasters who don’t do satire and courtside interviewers who don’t do cheekiness.
As time marches on, traditions will recede further into the past, and the centre of the tennis world will wonder why Australia is special. To keep hold of the “fourth slam”, Australia will keep stretching the elastic. Djokovic will still be here, still winning, still taking injury timeouts. Global events don’t take place in a vacuum, away from the stresses on globalism itself.
Those who are enjoying it now, in their unprecedented numbers, should make the most of it with all its flipsides.
