{"id":380482,"date":"2026-01-01T00:58:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T00:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/380482\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T00:58:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T00:58:18","slug":"rod-laver-arena-takes-shape-as-ao-approaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/380482\/","title":{"rendered":"Rod Laver Arena takes shape as AO approaches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rod Laver Arena is being transformed to be ready for players to hit the first balls next week leading into Australian Open 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Monday represented a milestone, with the line marking taking place while the famous Melbourne sign was painted at the end of the court.<\/p>\n<p>Next, the court furniture and LED screens will be installed as players start to arrive in Melbourne and Rod Laver Arena counts down to its <a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/whats-on\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">bumper program of events<\/a> during AO Opening Week presented by Herald Sun, beginning Monday 12 January.<\/p>\n<p>This includes the 1 Point Slam Driven by Kia, featuring reigning Grand Slam champions Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff and taking place on Wednesday 14 January.<\/p>\n<p>Rod Laver Arena will also host open practice sessions, <a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/articles\/news\/opening-week-kyrgios-joins-star-studded-lineup-biggest-names-hit-rod-laver-arena\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">blockbuster Opening Week Showdowns<\/a>, Red Bull Baseline, Kids Tennis Day and the inaugural AO Opening Ceremony, featuring the return of Roger Federer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rod Laver Arena is being transformed to be ready for players to hit the first balls next week&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-380482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}