‘Oz and Ends’ – In Melbourne, Finally

MELBOURNE, Australia (Tennis Panorama News, January 14, 2012)– After three planes with a combined total travel time of more than 30 hours, I am finally in Melbourne, exhausted and very jet lagged! I had always wanted to attend the Australian Open and even after my application was approved, it still did not truly hit me that I was going ‘down under’ until flying over Sydney and seeing a panoramic view of the harbor and the famous Opera House.

I was stunned to feel the chill in the air as I left Melbourne airport, I actually needed a sweater. I was anticipating 90-100 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures, but  Melbourne residents told me it’s been one of the coldest summers ever. I think I packed a combination of winter, spring and summer items which almost cost me an overweight baggage fee at the airport. It will be interesting to see how the players will adapt to the cooler-than-normal climate.

After arriving at my Melbourne dwelling in the early evening, I tried to make myself stay up until eleven o’clock so I could wake up at a normal time to get rid of my jet-lag.  Did. Not. Happen. I woke up at 3 am and could not go back to sleep. As the dawn came, I felt as though I were in London, England, or Paris in the October – a cloudy day, with a misty cool drizzle emerged and it felt as though I were back home in the New York City area with temperatures in the 50’s. Is this really Melbourne?

I made the trek from my dwelling to Melbourne Park, about a mile-and-a-half on foot. Melbourne, like New York is a walking city.  Also like New York, it’s a city with good public transportation. Melbourne has many trains, trams and buses.

The media center is a giant room filled with hundreds desks with TV monitors, with interview rooms on the perimeters. Most of the bigger media outlets have desks in the center of the huge room in the main media area. I’m in the north end of the floor in a quieter part of the media center – the Radio Room. I’m a radio person in my non-tennis media life so I feel right at home hearing other journalists put together radio reports and podcasts. Rather nice to be in this intimate space. Later in the day I was actually offered a spot in the main media room, but I respectively declined, that’s how much I love my space.

With the end of the qualies and news conferences taking place (more on this in another article later), the main interview room was full of action all afternoon with Caroline Wozniacki, Sam Stosur, Kim Clijsters, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Andy Murray, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic taking turns in the spotlight.

It seemed as though every other player interviewed has injury issues coming into the tournament. It made me feel as though it were “the walking wounded Australian Open.”

Saturday and Sunday will be days for me to “get my bearings” and eliminate my jet lag. The Australian Open has a very different layout from the US Open.

Receiving my credential in the media center in the morning I thought to myself  ‘welcome to the show.’ One media friend, who did not realize I was going to be in Australia saw me and said  almost exactly what I was thinking earlier – “Welcome to show, so now you are a part of it.”

This post is a way of briefly introducing you to what I call our ‘diverse’ Australian Open coverage and the thoughts behind it. Let me be honest, as mostly a hard news broadcast journalist I live to be objective, fair and factual in my old-school AP-like style. I’ve been doing it the Dragnet way “Just the facts, Ma’am,” pretty much since I began my career in media as a teenager.

We’ll be doing daily standard reporting – highlights and quotes of course. I am big on quotes. I like to let people tell their own stories using their own words, I think it comes from the fact that my favorite task to do as a journalist is the interview, one-on-ones especially. The players and what they say and do are the stories, not the reporters.

I am introducing ‘Oz and Ends,’ an “off-the record” type of daily peek into the Australian Open from my personal perspective. No, I won’t be breaking the fraternal media center code, what goes on in the media center, stays in the media center. This really will be a blog-type post of my random observations. This is a big departure from what I do professionally. It’s rare that I even write in the first person anymore.

I’m always telling reporters who work for the site to ‘bring people with you on your journey,’ now it’s my turn to do the same thing in an informal way with ‘Oz and Ends.’ I don’t know what each day will bring – whether it’s randomness or story-telling, we’ll see what develops each day.

I will also be doing a focus on some of the fans. Fans bring color and excitement to all Grand Slam tournaments and I think that they tend to get ignored by the bigger media outlets.

Provided I can get my phone situation in order, I will be tweeting from the site’s twitter account @TennisNewsTPN around the grounds. There are people who live in the media center during tournaments and I am not one of them. My hard news history has had me work in many different places, from international war zones, to local drug busts, from the local mayor’s offices to national political conventions. I like to move around. I’ll admit it, I’m a court hopper, and tweeting from my phone from all over the tournament grounds works well with my style of coverage, better than carrying a laptop around. Whether one is in the media center or not, it’s tough to cover everything, I’ll be back and forth from courts to the media center, a lot of walking, but it will be a lot of fun.

I’m going to try to focus on the more interesting match-ups as opposed to just what’s on the show courts. Let’s face it, not many of the opening round matches on the show courts are all that compelling.

Last, but certainly not least I will be trying to do a daily podcast to summarize the day’s play – an Australian Open update in a New York minute, as it were. Look out for some other surprise features. In addition, a shameless plug for myself which I usually never do, I will be contributing to a couple of other media entities, so watch out for my byline elsewhere in the wonderful world of tennis news.

Tonight I will get some sleep! Until next time.

Karen Pestaina is the founder and editor of Tennis Panorama News. She is in Melbourne, Australia covering the Australian Open as a member of the media.  Follow her throughout the Australian Open on twitter at @TennisNewsTPN. She freelances for various media outlets and has worked for many a broadcast news entity. She witnessed her first live tennis match as a young child at Forest Hills when Guillermo Vilas upset Jimmy Connors to win the 1977 US Open. This branded her as a Vilas fan for life.