A chance meeting in a corridor put Australia’s greatest hope in the company of one of its greatest legends.
A chance meeting in a corridor put Australia’s greatest hope in the company of one of its greatest legends.
By Stephen Brook and Cara Waters
January 22, 2025 — 6.42pm
Lleyton Hewitt and Alex de Minaur had the chance to fanboy a real-life legend at the Australian Open on Tuesday.
The pair were below decks in the restricted players area under Rod Laver Arena when none other than the legendary Frank Sedgman walked past. In the 1940s and 1950s Sedgman won the Australian Open twice and five grand slam singles titles on the way to winning 22 major titles, including, in 1952, the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon.
He is now aged 97.
“They were both extremely gracious – they always are,” said Open Season’s man on the spot of Hewitt and de Minaur. “They take the time to say g’day and ask how he is.”
Sedgman was elevated to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Australian Tennis Hall of Fame in 1996.
He was instrumental in breaking new ground when players were transitioning to the professional ranks and has attended the Open most days this year.
“He is well recognised at the tournament. He is chuffed about that,” our source said.
Tennis Australia will honour Sedgman on court on Friday night during the men’s semi-finals.
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Top-seeded tucker
Top-seeded hospitality couple Martin Benn and Vicki Wild have well and truly emerged from their headline-generating abrupt departure from Melbourne destination restaurant Society in 2021.
Chef Benn and maitre’d Wild have taken charge of the Open’s flagship restaurant, Club 1905. You join this club courtesy of a daily corporate hospitality package including attendance at the restaurant and Rod Laver Arena. The package has a price tag of $33,0000 for the fortnight.
Dinner is from 5.30pm until 7pm, when the evening tennis session starts. But people have been known to linger, resulting, as we reported on Tuesday, in some very desirable empty seats.
So what’s better than top tennis? Well there’s variety for a start. Benn spent two months writing about 350 different recipes for his menu of canapes, entrees, mains, vegetarian options and dessert, which changes every couple of days.
He said he was used to cooking for 60 covers a sitting but now he’s doing 400 in the luxe space, which has plush carpet, soaring arches, huge chandeliers and a deep terrace overlooking Garden Square.
There have been some issues to overcome too. Supply issues, for example, included procuring 400 kilograms of citrus fruit yuzu, which required recalling pickers back to the orchard.
“Every day is better than the last day, but no day has been bad,” Benn said.
He and Wild shocked the industry by closing their celebrated Sydney fine diner Sepia in 2018 and moving to Melbourne to establish destination restaurant Society for restaurant impresario Chris Lucas.
But both departed in 2021 after the official opening was delayed several times due to COVID-19. “The one we don’t talk about,” Wild quipped.
The hospitality power couple have kept a low profile since, consulting and releasing a book while undertaking a pop-up restaurant at the National Gallery of Victoria. Now they are back living in Melbourne.
“We came back to Melbourne because we didn’t get a chance to enjoy it in the time that we were here because of COVID,” Wild said.
“It’s really good for us to come back to Melbourne in a positive way,” Benn told Open Season.
Said Wild: “It’s been a massive challenge, but a good learning curve.”
It’s certainly demanding too. When Open Season checked in earlier in the week, the pair were yet to get to a tennis match.
Banks in town
What does Tyra Banks have in common with Governor-General Sam Mostyn?
The US model/TV presenter/producer and the King’s representative will both be at the Australian Open on Friday to attend the AO Inspiration Series event.
“She will walk the red carpet, go to the event and go to the tennis as a guest of the Australian Open,” an AO source told Open Season (Banks, that is, not the governor-general).
Attendees will hear from former Open champion Caroline Wozniacki and Sophie Delezio, now aged 23, who has been in the public eye since she survived a horrific accident aged just two years old.
While the AO and sponsors are busy finalising guests for the women’s and men’s finals, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is not attending, presumably wanting to be seen as a man of the people. Or maybe Albanese is traumatised by the negative press he received after photos emerged of him playing tennis in Perth just a day after Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue was firebombed.
Banks has been doing it tough of late: her Pacific Palisades home did not survive the devastating Los Angeles fires.
The 51-year-old relocated to Sydney ahead of opening an ice cream shop in Darling Harbour called Smize and Dream, part of a chain selling frozen treats that promises to “combine ice cream, entertainment and dreams on a global scale”. To “smize” is to assume a playful or alluring expression of the eyes, such as the one Banks used to urge contestants on her reality program, America’s Next Top Model, to adopt. With a federal election looming, maybe Albo could take some learnings.
A room of one’s own
Tennis players have got to bed down somewhere, and Melbourne’s top hotels have jostled for the honour of hosting them. Who wouldn’t want to give their guests a chance to rub shoulders at the breakfast buffet with some of the world’s top seeds.
The top players are in high demand and the deals hotel chains offer to lure them to stay are opaque. Alex de Minaur used to stay at the Ovolo hotel in South Yarra but ditched it this year after signing on as an Airbnb ambassador.
The Demon posted to Instagram before the tournament that he was excited to get settled into his Airbnb and “make it a true home away from home” for the tournament.
He still participated in a special pre-tournament question and answer session for Ovolo alongside former Open champion and world No.1 Victoria Azarenka, whose Ovolo stay was cut short after a first-round exit.
The newly opened Lanson Place Melbourne, near Parliament Gardens, hosted Russian player Anna Blinkova and France’s Varvara Gracheva, while newish Melbourne Place in Russell Street hosted Italian Lorenzo Musetti.
The hotels get the glamour of having a top tennis player staying, and players will often give their accommodation a plug on social media. Blinkova, Gracheva and Musetti all posted to Instagram about their hotels.
Marriott has big-name players staying in its Melbourne properties. But the firm does not offer free accommodation – players have to pay their own way.
Area vice president for Australia Jason Nuell was keeping mum on player names but said Marriott properties close to Melbourne Park, such as Le Meridien and the Westin, were at 90 to 95 per cent capacity over the tournament.
“We have players staying across the hotels. The challenge with the players is when they get knocked out they leave,” he said.
Lancemore hotels in the CBD is hosting world No.2 Alexander Zverev and Italian Matteo Berrettini, among others.
Crown’s deal to host management company IMG’s stable of tennis players ended in 2022, but the hotel still accommodated a large stable including the “new Rafa”, Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz; China’s Zhizhen Zhang; Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime; Poland’s Iga Swiatek; the United States’ Sloane Stephens; Norway’s Casper Rudd; Russia’s Daniil Medvedev; and Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka.
Alcaraz lavished praise on Crown, labelling it his “home away from home”. Now, where have we heard that before? “The staff are so friendly, and the team enjoy eating at all the restaurants,” he said, adding his favourite restaurant was Nobu.
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Stephen Brook is a special correspondent for The Age and CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously deputy editor of The Sunday Age. He is a former media editor of The Australian and spent six years in London working for The Guardian.Connect via Twitter or email.
Cara Waters is the city editor for The Age.Connect via Twitter, Facebook or email.
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