Australian Open director Craig Tiley does not rule out
naming the stadium after Serbia’s legendary tennis star
Novak Djokovic.
The 36-year-old is regarded as the greatest player in the
history of men’s singles tennis in the Open era after winning 24 Grand Slam
titles.
Djokovic’s most successful major competition has been the
Australian Open where he has lifted the title 10 times, which is a record in
the tournament’s history as well.
Tiley was quoted in a recent report where he did not rule out
the possibility of naming a stadium after the name of the current world number
one, largely because of the success he had while playing in Melbourne over the
years.
“You’re the second person who’s asked me that today,” he
said. “Look, I mean, ultimately the naming of the arena is not my decision or
tennis Australia’s because we….a lot of people don’t really understand the
Wimbledon and the French and the US Open, they own the facility in which they
run their events.
“We lease it and the Govt, the Victorian Govt owns our
facilities and we lease the facilities from them and we are fortunate that they
invest in those facilities but we don’t own them.
“So sometime in September, December we move in, we roll out
everything for the event and by the middle of February we move out and then
right after a year it’s run by a trust for concerts and all that.
“So you don’t see these tennis courts in the stadium. We
wish we did own it because we think we could have some more creativity on
running more tennis events throughout a year.”
He continued by
saying: “Yeah, the government, they do a great job on the presynched and uh..
and it’s a great presynched infrastructure the Govt’s put together, it’s
magnificent. But yeah, it’s a different construct to the other event. So naming
of an arena would be a combination of input that would have to happen. But I
would be certainly a supporter of recognizing Novak in some way, unbelievable
achievements here in Australia.”