Open Not Just For Players, Says Former Fan

The Age

Monday January 19, 2009

LINDA PEARCE

LLEYTON Hewitt believes the Australian Open's current late-January calendar slot is ideal, but it is also true that the Australian, who first visited Melbourne Park as a tennis-mad Adelaide schoolboy on his summer holidays, has never known anything else.

"For an Australian, it fits in so well with obviously the school holidays and getting kids out there," said Hewitt, now a Sydney-based father-of-two.

"And I think for the sport of tennis in this country, that really helps as well, you know, that the young kids can come out and watch a lot of it, even on the back courts, get a good atmosphere out here.

"I think sport-wise there's not a lot on at this time of the year either, so it sort of stands out by itself as well, which is probably a good thing for our grand slam. So it's a tough call. It's obviously early in the year. (But) a lot of overseas players have prepared well enough to win it in the past."

The tournament's youngest-ever men's qualifier and home-grown 2005 finalist has not spoken about the dates issue with new ATP player council president and three-time champion Roger Federer.

But he said: "I'm sure Roger knows (about the local viewpoint). He's had a lot of success here in the past. It hasn't really changed his performance, I guess. He's lucky that he's been able to come out after only one or two weeks' preparation and still play extremely well.

"But obviously there's a lot more to it than just worrying about the players for a couple of weeks, I guess. You know, the tournament has to worry about ticket sales, kids being around the place, a whole lot of other things."

Federer yesterday clarified his comments about the timing of the Open, claiming that was one of a number of issues to be considered by incoming ATP chief executive Adam Helfant and had been misconstrued as a demand to push the event into February.

"A lot has been said, like 'the Australian Open has to be moved two weeks later'," Federer said. "That's not what was meant in any way. We were asked if we should change the Australian Open schedule ... we always talk about calendar changes. It was taken out of context.

"What we said was that in a perfect world it would be nicer to have a longer Australian swing, move around a little bit. But we don't live in a perfect world. It's still great, for instance, to have the Australian Open where it is because we're having record numbers, prizemoney has gone up.

"Players love this tournament. We have attended this tournament, what, for the last 15 years. It's really become a very, very prestigious grand slam to play and one of our favourites. It is basically the players' slam. Those are all nice things for Adam Helfant to see."

© 2009 The Age

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