2008 Men's Singles
2008 
Melbourne Park underwent a radical transformation in 2008, the traditional green Rebound Ace replaced with blue Plexicushion. The colour attracted rave reviews from all but Andy Roddick who said: “Half my family is colour blind anyway so it doesn’t really matter”. With the colour change came a more consistent medium-fast to fast-paced court surface but even that was not enough to speed up proceedings between Marcos Baghdatis and Lleyton Hewitt, who went on court for their third round match at 11:49 pm and didn’t come off until 4:34 am the following morning – the latest-finish in tournament history. Serbians featured heavily in the latter stages of the tournament; Jelena Jankovic reaching the semifinal and Ana Ivanovic falling 7-5 6-3 to Maria Sharapova in the women’s final. Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 4-6 6-4 6-3 7-6(2) in a bubbling cauldron of a men’s final. Off court the tournament set a world record for Grand Slam day/night attendance - 62,885 fans on day four (breaking the record 61,083 set by the US Open on 1 September 2007), and overall attendance exceeded 600,000 for the first time with a record of 605,735 fans through the gates. On court, Bernard Tomic became the youngest junior Grand Slam champion in the Open era aged 15 years and three months.
