The Aussie Open Stuck in the NFL’s Shadow

Pity the poor Australian Open. With no major network coverage and broadcast exclusively on ESPN2 at all hours of the night, it already struggles to connect with an American audience. This year the task is made doubly difficult in that the tournament started on the night of the NFC and AFC Championship games and will conclude on the day of the Super Bowl. ↵↵I don’t think that this is usually the way the schedule plays out. The Aussie always coincides with the NFL playoffs in some way, but coinciding with the motherlode of the NFL season is hard luck indeed for a tennis tournament that is not exactly must-see TV in the first place. It reminds me of the plight of golf’s fourth major last year, the PGA, which occurred during the middle weekend of Beijing Olympic Fever. Usually the PGA grabs a few headlines for itself merely for having no significant sports competition other than the dog days of the MLB schedule. Last year, though, it was as if it never happened. Quick, who won the 2008 PGA? ↵

↵

↵↵And this year’s Australian Open is worthy of attention, particularly the men’s draw, which is shaping up to be one of the hotly contested brackets a major has ever seen. There’s Federer and Nadal, of course, the tennis equivalent of Ali and Frazier. There is the reigning Aussie champion and world No. 3, Novak Djokovic. And then there is Andy Murray, the world No. 4, who has been simply unbeatable so far this year and who, since his loss to Federer in last year’s U.S. Open final, has beaten King Rog four straight times and thrown in a win over Nadal for good measure. ↵

↵↵The men’s draw is so packed that already in the third round there are marquee matches on tap, with the mother of them all being Federer and two-time Australian Open champion Marat Safin. I’m not sure when the last time was that there was such a high-octane pairing in the third round of a Slam. Not to mention the fact that Fed and Safin have some wrought Aussie Open history behind them, a marathon semi-final in 2005 that Safin won in five en route to the title, with the fifth set ending at 9-7.↵

↵↵That match will go off tomorrow night, along with Andy Roddick’s tasty third-round meeting with the always entertaining French trick-shot artist, Fabrice Santoro. Tonight, the men’s No. 1 Rafa Nadal is in action in his second-round match, as well as the women’s No. 6 seed, Venus Williams, who will look to continue her processional towards a likely semi-final showdown with her sister. ↵

↵↵In other words, given that a week from now you probably will be so lost in Super Bowl hype that the idea of sitting down to watch some tennis in the wee hours of the morning will seem like some sort of Howie Mandel skit, you might want to get your Aussie Open viewing in early this year.↵

↵