Roger's Haiti match a hit.

The other day I went to my first tennis match ever. For 10 dollars, I got to see Serena Williams, Roger Federer and some other people play tennis for an hour or so, and for a good cause too. The event , ‘Hit for Haiti’, was thought up by Roger Federer a day before and it was to collect funds for the rebuilding of quake-torn Haiti.



$10 dollars is as good as giving it away, so of course there were long, long lines of people queuing up that morning to buy tickets for the match at Rod Laver Arena. Judging from the size of the crowd, I’d guess they would have collected a fair amount of money for the cause.

No one should come to a $10 dollar tennis match and expect high-octane tennis. This was more of a ‘majlis ramah mesra bersama Roger,Kim, dan Novak’ than anything else. The players were all mic’ed up and they hammed it up accordingly, grunting and growling and joking through the entire match. The match which was of course T-I-P-U, but don’t tell the children that.



A different side of the players were on display here. They got to show that they could stop being endorsement-magnet tennis cyborgs, and that they too can joke and laugh and make a fool of  themselves just like you and me , in front of a full capacity stadium
.
Maybe it’s the last, maybe perhaps the only, chance for these sporting rivals to play a friendly match against
each other. After all, the Australian Open began the right next day.

And I’m not saying she jinxed it or anything, but Maria Sharapova, who wasn’t part of the charity
match, dropped out of the tournament after only one match. Woooooo.

And here's a picture of Mr President looking very happy after Federer's team 'won'.