Melbourne 2011 Day 1

Written by: Sven Groeneveld on 12th January 2011

Melbourne 2011 Day 1 |

We arrived at around 1, after an hour and half flight from Sydney, at the Grand Hyatt and it was a quite evening because Mats had to get the luggage up to the check in lobby!

On our arrival in the lobby we met up with Toby Glyn, of Adidas. He had just arrived from London and we had a walk to get a small bite and a catch up!

The Grand Hyatt is the official players hotel and only a 10 min drive to the site! This morning we caught up with Claus Martin, also an Adidas team member that is in charge of the distribution of new gear for the players. He is attending his 100th consecutive Grand slam event!

Caroline will be coming in tonight and so will be Maria so I guess I will have to miss the Blondes for a bit longer! However today another favorite player of mine did have a practice after her 2 days off! Sorana Cirstea!

We practiced at Albert Reserve, which is a facility just about 10 min away from the site with about 10 additional practice courts! As you can imagine, because there are so many players here for the qualifying event, which will start today and the main draw on Monday, they need the extra space! I don’t know the exact number but at least 400 players are entered and then there is all of their entourage too!

After the hit we went by the site to pick up our credentials and called it a day since we have so much work ahead of us!

The rain is really hurting the country because many families across Australia have lost their home and more! We will hopefully get a chance as a tennis family to help with some sort of a relief! We are planning something for Saturday the 15th (more to come about that)!

Tomorrow is a busier day, as we will have more players heading to Melbourne! Everybody is preparing for the dance and some butterflies are appearing in anticipation for the big event!

Topics: Caroline Wozniacki, mats merkel, sven groeneveld

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