Boo Berds.

On Sunday, we spent the afternoon at the Australian Open Tennis, again.  We got to see three matches (and we left with one still to go, after seven hours).  Good thing we had the 'good-sense' to pick the "shade" tickets at the HiSense arena.  It started out as a lovely 70ish degree morning, but turned into a real Aussie scorcher - with the sun beating down on the court - it was well over 100 degrees in the sun on the court.

Easily over 100 degrees with no breeze or shade in sight.

This is later in the afternoon, but that side of the arena
was in the sun the whole day.  

The first match was Men's Doubles, where we watched the Bryan brothers of the good ol' USA beat some dudes from Great Britain (this is what Jeff says, but I'm not positive on this...).  It was a fast match, with rackets and balls flying everywhere - literally, one of the Bryan brothers threw his racket up in the air twice in an attempt to hit a ball.  It did not work.  But, in the end, they won, even though they dropped the second set 0-6.  This will hopefully be their 5th Australian Open Men's Doubles Title...sometime next week, after a couple more matches.

USA's Bryan brothers on the left; Great Britain on the right. 

The second match was a snoozer...so much that I can't even remember who it was...so, we won't dwell on that.  But during the second match, an interesting audience member sat down in front of us - she was a hot mess...she came in and immediately broke out a huge container of fruit and scarfed it down (without taking a breath), then continued to huff and puff about the heat, then proceeded to make herself a gourmet lunch - all that was prepared in her seat.  In addition to that, she felt the need to apply sunscreen even though we were fully under cover (not a ray of sunshine hit us at anytime in our seats) - she nearly undressed to ensure that she covered every inch of skin exposed to oxygen.

That bowl of fruit was scarfed down in about 3 seconds...and
it was full when she started.

Then the third match began...it was a doozy.  It was a 4-hour match with four sets, and had every possibility of going to a fifth set, right to the end.  Berdych vs. Almagro.  It pretty much went back and forth the entire match, with their scoring points being nearly even.  Almagro couldn't win a tie-break to save his life and lost 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 6-7.  Almagro is a spunky Spaniard and Berdych turned out to be a jerky-Czech.  Almagro hit him with the ball causing Berdych to go down like he had been shot in the face with a 12-gauge...upon inspecting the replay, Almagro hit him in the arm.  The ARM, people.  Almagro went to the net to apologize and Berdych didn't even acknowledge him...AND, at the end of the match, Berdych refused to shake his hand after going toe-to-toe for four sets.  The crowd went wild,  yelling and screaming and booing him.  You couldn't even hear his post-win interview because everyone was yelling at him.  What a jerk.

Almagro serving.

Tune into Berdych's next match...the Aussies won't likely forget his unsportsman-like behavior and will likely take it out on him...

We feel so lucky to be able to experience all of these great
events...Melbourne is a sport lovers paradise!