Tennis players know how to give back. Just look at the long list of charities supported, built and sustained by tennis players (active and retired). theNETcourt will be featuring charitable and philanthropic acts of ATP and WTA stars as a regular blog feature, but ahead of the Australian open which begins in about eight hours, we wanted to note the exhibition staged Sunday at Rod Laver arena that raised almost $200,000 for Haiti Relief. It was a heart warming gesture from our favourite tennis celebs to turn their attention away from something trivial (in the grand scheme of world events) and do something to help the terrible suffering in Haiti. In total, monies raised from the event plus donations from; ATP World Tour, Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, ITF, Grand Slam Committee and Tennis Australia will exceed half a million dollars. Federer, devastated by the turmoil and strife in Haiti new they could contribute. He rallied his tennis friends to help. ""I was following it on TV and saw the devastation and I thought we should do something," Federer said.
Federer, Williams, Hewitt and Stosur teamed against Nadal, Djokovic, Roddick, Clijsters & Tomic in a team event that saw team Fed win 7-6. Federer said afterwards "It was a lot of fun. It's a great thing and I'm happy the players were also in such good spirits."
At theNETcourt we're proud of our champs for stepping up and making sure that all of us keep some perspective on our sport. No matter how much we want our 'guy' or 'gal' to win, tragedies like this make the outcome of tennis match seem insignificant. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't appreciate it all the same.
For information on the relief effort and to donate visit: http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
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