One ball, one serve, one exchange will decide who wins the duel, advances one round and approaches the winning amount of one million Australian dollars, i.e. about 14 million crowns.
On Thursday, the 48-player event spiced up Australian Open qualifying week and offered unprecedented battles. It was attended by 24 professionals from the ATP and WTA circuit and the same number of amateurs.
The event experienced its zero year already last year, but only 60 thousand dollars were played and only the Russian Andrey Rublyov took part in the top 10 players at that time.
Because of this year’s event, the organizers made the competition significantly more attractive. So it was a surprise that, for example, the Greek Maria Sakkari knocked out the world number one Carlos Alcaraz or the Polish Iga Šwiatek knocked out the Italian Flavio Cobolli.
The exhibition, which was attended by a full Rod Laver Arena, was spiced up by a special rule. While amateurs traditionally had two serves to put the ball into play, professionals only had one.
And on that, for example, Jannik Sinner burned out, sending a serve into the net to the future winner, amateur Jordan Smith. In the final, he beat another professional, the 117th woman in the world, Joanna Garland from Taiwan.
“Great event. I was hoping an amateur would win,” American tennis player Coco Gauff wrote on the X network.
A video of Alcaraz experiencing the final battle behind the scenes and how he couldn’t believe his eyes when the Australian amateur really won was also circulated on the Internet.
The start of the tournament also offered one special fight with Czech participation. Linda Fruhvirtová broke into the main spider by qualifying when she unexpectedly outplayed the passively playing Spaniard Pablo Carreň Busta.
In the end, however, the male favorite got into the tournament as a lucky loser and once again the lot led the young Czech woman into his path, but he was not wrong the second time.
“This is a strange rematch. Linda outplayed Pablo in the morning with a forehand winner,” said Ben Rothenberg, former New York Times editor and well-known tennis reporter.
But overall, the Grand Slam novelty has caused a pleasant uproar, and some players on the world circuit are even calling for the same action to be repeated at every event of the big four.
