Tales of Shirt Ripping and Flare Throwing
by Craig Thomas
One of the most popular innovations at the Australian Open in
recent years has been the IBM Fast Serve. Running for several
years now, fans can test their service speed against that recorded
by the top players by firing their best shot and have it measured
by a radar gun. The daily and tournament best are displayed on a
board for men, women, and both boys and girls ten years and under.
As of today the fastest recorded fan serves for each category, in
kph (mph in brackets) were 205 (128), 168 (105), 143 (89) and 118
(74) respectively. Not bad!
Yesterday, Centre Court fans were treated to the sight of Pat Rafter
making a fool of himself. First, some background. It has become a
bit of a tradition for eccentric Australian Andrew Ilie to rip his
shirt in two, straight down the front, on court, in an exuberant
victory celebration after her registers a win. Well, after defeating
Tim Henman in straight sets yesterday, Rafter tried the same thing
(later explaining it as "a one-off thing for Andrew"). After
desperately struggling for some time, and only managing to
produce a tear about half way down the shirt, he tried to generate
more leverage for himself by stretching it to the ground where he
stood on it and tried to rip the remainder that way. This was also
unsuccessful, and eventually Rafter surrendered and removed the
albeit distressed shirt in the traditional way, over his head. A
cruel person may have been inclined to observe that the shirt had
put up more of a fight than Henman did.
The saga of Anna Kournikova and Barbara Schett continues. Today
there was a minor security scare on Court One during their doubles
match against Shinobu Asagoe and Yuka Yoshida. Late in the first
set a spectator threw a lighted flare onto the court during a point,
which spewed out a cloud of bright orange smoke. The flare was
removed, the damaged portion of court repainted, the offender
detained, and after twelve minutes the match resumed. When asked
in the post match press conference if anything like that had ever
happened to them before, Barbara answered no, but Anna said "Yeah,
a streaker," a reference to the guy who run onto the court during
one of her doubles matches at last year's Wimbledon. Barbara
commented "Not to me. Too bad."
And for all the "Seinfeld" fans out there, you may be interested to
know that there is a ball boy working at the Open by the name of
Cosmo Kramer. The ten-year-old has created quite a stir, receiving
interview requests and has been asked for his autograph (to which
he has obliged like a true pro). As several journalists have
reported, there has yet been no mention as to whether he will be
assigned to any matches featuring Monica Seles.
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The views expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect those of this magazine.
http://tennis-ontheline.com/01aoct5.htm © 2025
Last updated 26 September 2015
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