By Mikayla van Loon
The Australian Open allows children to dream big and picture themselves standing in the centre of Rod Laver Arena ready to serve to their opponent.
For Lukas Vennix, nine-years-old, not only did he get to play tennis on the famous arena with his tennis club, he was also chosen to toss the coin in the opening round of Osaka versus Osorio.
It all started with a train ride into the city with his mum Manat in the morning before meeting his friends outside the Australian Open complex.
“As a group we had to wait outside at Rod Laver Arena. Then we got called in to go up in the elevator, and we could go out on the court and have a little hit,” he said.
“It felt really exciting. I really liked the material that the court was made of.”
As a tennis Hot Shot player at Tennis for Life, Lukas was chosen to toss the coin on court at Rod Laver Arena and was one of 150 children to do so.
“It was really exciting and I felt really lucky. I was a bit nervous, but I was more excited.”
“I got given the coins to go off on the elevator and I talked to the umpire. She said she’d call me up when the players were here. When she called me up, I felt really excited. I met Osorio, too. And when Naomi came up, she told me to flip the coin.”
Although he couldn’t remember what the coin landed on, Lukas said Osaka chose to serve first.
Being one of Lukas’ favourite players in the women’s competition, he said it was a pretty great experience to be out on court with Naomi Osaka.
As a young tennis hopeful, with a dream of playing professionally one day, Lukas said his favourite tennis players include Rafael Nadal, Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas, an inspiring line up of role models.
Although two of his top players faced off in the men’s final, being Nadal and Medvedev, Lukas said he had to support Nadal to win.
But for Lukas the most important and best part about playing tennis is “playing with my mates and just having fun with it”.
Now back at school, Lukas said he was able to share the highlight of his holidays with his friends.
“I told my friends and they were pretty surprised and I told my teacher too and she was very surprised.”
