The 1st Grand Slam of the year at the Australian Open will begin in a week in Melbourne so we thought we would look at some fun facts about the tournament, here goes:
1. This year the tournament will have a brand new surface for the first time in 20 years - Plexicushion. The main benefits to the new surface are better consistency and less retention of heat.
2.This year is the 96th year of the event and was first helf in 1905 (the only interruptions were the war years)
3.554,858 people attended the event in 2007.
4.The tournament in 2007 served 41,109 buckets of hot chips, 13,600 hot dogs, 21,300 serves of pizza, 21,323 tokyo rolls, 153,086 bottles of Evian water and 126,353 soft drinks.
5.The most popular item from the Australian Open retail shop was the official player towel with 6,500 sold at Melbourne Park and an additional 2,000 sold through the Australian Open on-line shop.
6.The Australian Open is the Grand Slam of Asia/Pacific and the website is available in 3 other languages apart from English - Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
7.The tournament is the only Grand Slam with a retracable roof (Wimbledon is following suit in 2009) so in the unlikely event that it rains at Melbourne, rain won't stop play on the 2 main showcourts.
8.Up until 1987 the event was held on grass and the following year was held on Rebound Ace.
9.This year's event has a total prizemoney of AUD20,000,000.
10.Maria has played the event 5 times and her best result was reaching the final last year (Maria also reached the final of the juniors event in 2002).