{"id":421202,"date":"2026-01-18T12:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T12:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/421202\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T12:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T12:43:09","slug":"long-queues-for-fans-at-melbourne-park-on-day-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/421202\/","title":{"rendered":"Long queues for fans at Melbourne Park on day one"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis fans faced mammoth queues to enter Melbourne Park on Sunday, as more than 73,000 people descended on the precinct for the first day of this year\u2019s Australian Open.<\/p>\n

Lines to enter the grounds peaked from late morning until after lunchtime, with estimated wait times creeping over an hour.<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

Fans wait in long queues outside the Grand Slam Oval entrance on Sunday.Credit: Chris Hopkins<\/p>\n

At the Grand Slam Oval entrance shortly after midday, two separate lines snaked around two different corners, with attendees seemingly confused about which direction they should head. The Garden Square entrance at the other end of the precinct also had long lines shortly before play commenced.<\/p>\n

The Open announced a day session record crowd of 73,235. The previous record was less than 70,000 and set in 2019 in the middle of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Arron Hall, who travelled to the tournament from Sydney, said the wait to enter when he arrived at about 12.30pm was over an hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is to be expected \u2026 when you come to a live sports event. The first day, on a Sunday, with weather like this,\u201d Hall said, as he waited in another queue to grab seats at one of the courts.<\/p>\n

He said that plenty of people around him were growing frustrated with the staff, and that some were requesting refunds because they\u2019d missed the beginning of play.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

\u201cI made a joke to this lady, saying, \u2018It\u2019s nothing on Wimbledon\u2019. She\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019ve been to Wimbledon, and it\u2019s not this bad!\u2019\u201d Hall said. <\/p>\n

Another couple, who declined to give their names, said they had been waiting for 45 minutes when they were halfway through the Olympic Boulevard queue shortly after midday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not good enough \u2026 considering the price of the ticket,\u201d one of them said. \u201c[Tennis Australia] will probably need to have a crisis management meeting after this \u2026 they can\u2019t do this for 14 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a press conference before play commenced on Sunday morning, tournament director Craig Tiley announced that ground pass sales for the day had officially been halted \u2013 signalling the busy day that was to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis fans faced mammoth queues to enter Melbourne Park on Sunday, as more than 73,000 people descended on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-421202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}