A slow start to the day for us this morning after a late night last night. Our expectations for the tennis today are very high after last night and the line-up for today’s play.

We left our apartment at 10:30 and were at the Arena and seated by 10:50.

The first match was between 2 Russian grunters, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova! Svetlana Kuznetsova won both the tennis and grunting easily in 2 sets 6-2 6-2. We were most impressed with her double grunt, one before and one after hitting the ball!

Kim Clijsters was way too good for her Thai opponent,  Tamarine Tanasugarn, winning 6-3 6-3.

Rafael Nadal had an easy match against Lukas Lacko, winning 6-2 6-2 6-2.

Our seats were about 10 seats up from courtside, and right on the Melbourne end service line.

After the first match it started to get really hot, especially when the cloud burnt off. Deb moved to the shaded area just around from us. She sat in the “Press” area. It wasn’t long before she noticed she was the only one applauding, so she quickly made like one of the locals. I moved around to be with her after the Rafa game started, got too hot for me. After a while a security guy asked us for our Press passes, so we reluctantly moved, but as luck had it he did us a favour and we found much better seats closer to the action. We were given the tip to move seats if we got too hot from friends we met in Morocco, and we are so glad we did, thanks Jo.

 The best of the crowd interjections for the day were:

“Hey Rafa, fix ya wedgy!”, and he did    LOL

“Rafa, will you marry me”, to which he gave a thumbs up, and a roar from the crowd

But the best of the day was

“Hey Rafa, will you have my baby” to which he gave a thumbs up and a big smile, and got a big cheer from the crowd.

On the way back to our apartment we both commented on the lack of atmosphere today. We figured it was mainly due to the lack of presence of “The Fanatics”. They add so much to the overall experience. And I guess 3 walk-overs and no Australians involved added to it a bit as well.

We are having a bit of a cool down this afternoon before dinner at the Melbourne Press Club, its head chef, is George from Master Chef. So it should be interesting.

We ate in the bar rather than the restaurant proper. (Probably 1/3 of the cost) It’s very narrow with a bar on one side and tables on the other. Very busy when we were there, and as a consequence pretty loud, but manageable.

We started with Stuffed Zucchini Flower and a Fried Haloumi with Peppered Figs, we both agreed the Zucchini won, so tasty. Then for mains I had an Open Lamb Souvlaki and Deb had Calamari, both were very yummy. Mains were a draw, if a Greek couldn’t cook these two meals to perfection there was going to be something very wrong.

After dinner we retired back to the apartment to watch the tennis, go figure huh!!

We explore more of Melbourne tomorrow day and then Rod Laver Arena tomorrow night. The matches are Roger Federer V’s Victor Hanescu and then Karolina Sprem V’s Casey Dellacqua (Aust).

It  should be another good night.