Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Australian Open Day 2 1/21/14

After a good night's sleep and a fantastic breakfast at our host hotel, Team USA boarded our bus for some sightseeing. Our Australia host, Robin, has arranged a private tour of the MCG, a multi use stadium and the National Sports Museum. This is also the home of the Melbourne Cricket Club, the oldest cricket club in the world. Everyone is excited, but Don is beyond thrilled because this is a very impressive stadium which seats 100,000 people. I hope he can stay with the group and not wander off or up to the top! Peta Phillips is our guide. She is with The Lord's Taverners Australia Branch, a sponsor of the tournament. They have raised over 10 million since their inception in 1982 The museum is amazing and beautiful. Every exhibit has such detail about the history of the specific sport in Australia. There is an interactive section and booklet with questions to answer as you go through the museum. Katherine completed the booklet and really enjoyed the hunt! Her gift, a rugby bank. The museum is inside the MCG, so out we went and down to the field. It's hard to believe you could fit up to 100,000 in here. That has only happened once....when Billy Graham came. Don examined as much as he could and our host will be sending him more information about the structure. Do I see some future work here? Our next stop, to spend the afternoon at The Open! Barry Holman, Founder and Pres of Athletes without Limits and Ben Hadden, our player from Ohio, joined us. The weather is perfect with beautiful blue skies. At this point, I think pictures tell the story better. Our highlights of the day: It took Katherine and Ben 4.5 minutes to get their first interview for a radio station, the Legend's match was awesome and Djokovic looks good warming up. Enjoy the photos!