Australian Open, day 1: the good, the bad and the ugly

THE GOOD

-- Alicia Molik's commentary. Possibly the most intelligent, articulate and personable player Australian tennis has ever produced, Molik has played most of the women on the tour and is very familiar with their games. I've been watching big chunks of boring matches in the lead-up tournaments just to listen to her.

-- Todd Woodbridge's commentary. He's also very smart, and pulls no punches.

-- The sight of 16-year-old Bernard Tomic winning the first set of his Open debut game. Australian teenage boys have been getting publicity for all kinds of stupidity and excess over the last year or so and it is very refreshing to see a tough, talented, focused, hard-working kid playing controlled, thoughtful tennis on his first big day out.

-- The return to form of Jelena Dokic, and, one hopes, the continued absence of her daddy.

-- John Fitzgerald.


THE BAD

-- Lame second-string TV 'journalists' doing the rounds with their mics looking for 'features', which mostly means asking incredibly lame and vapid questions of people like Bernard Tomic's father and coach John, who obviously just wanted to sit and watch his kid play tennis but answered the inane questions politely and calmly.

-- Channel Seven's apparent indifference to the basic courtesy of pronouncing other people's names properly. They ought to research the pronunciation of the name of every player in the draw and then drill all the commentators in all the names until they can pass a test. NB this applies in particular to Russians and Frenchpersons. NBB Cricket commentary would also benefit from this practice.

-- John Alexander's apparent inability to notice, much less mention, any other player on the court if Lleyton Hewett is present.


THE UGLY

-- The cod-French pronunciation of sponsor Garnier of its name in its ads as 'Garny-air', to which one must listen approx 10,000 times a day if one has the telly on to follow the tennis while doing other things. But I have whinged about this before.

-- The appalling sexism that infests every level of Roger Rasheed's commentary. This is a hangover observation from last year, and one can only hope that Channel Seven sent him to re-education camp over the winter, or at least keeps him away from the women's games this year.