Australian Open 2025: A Novak Djokovic state, tennis on the MCG, and keeping Melbourne Park ahead of the world

“What we’ve got is awesome, so I’m not a dissatisfied customer of what we’ve got, but the way I operate, the way I lead is [to keep raising the bar and pushing ourselves]. That’s why I challenge the team to change the site 50 per cent, if not more, every year.”

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Tiley is known for his grand ideas, and he told this masthead he would love to organise a tennis match in the middle of the MCG one day with the aim of attracting the biggest tennis crowd ever.

“Maybe [we should] start calling for it. I think it’d be great – put a tennis court in the middle,” he said.

“We could put something together, and you could potentially have the biggest tennis audience ever in the history of the world.

“We could have an exhibition one night, and you could bring back all the greats. You could have the two best players in the world play each other. It would be great content.”

Ten-time champion Novak Djokovic endured more Australian Open drama, from beating Carlos Alcaraz to suffering another hamstring injury and ultimately retiring one set into his semi-final against Alexander Zverev.

Djokovic’s sudden retirement triggered boos from the Rod Laver Arena crowd, but Tiley was adamant that it was not “anti-Novak”.

“I always hate the booing – it doesn’t matter what the reason is,” Tiley said.

“It’s not a cool thing to do in any situation, but I definitely think that was a boo of disappointment. I don’t think it was targeted at Novak at all.

“Even the conversation in the corridors here afterwards with the players, and that kind of stuff; there was a general understanding of acceptance that it was not because of Novak, it was because the fans saw only one set.

“It was a good set, and they wanted more of that. That was gearing up to be an epic, and then it suddenly stopped.”

Tiley said there was no scenario where fans would have been recompensed in that situation, outside of a withdrawal before the match even started.

He is also seriously open to a Djokovic statue being erected at Melbourne Park in honour of his Australian Open achievements.

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“I think the way we’ve got the celebration of the Australians in the hall of fame is great, but I think we’ve decided we’re a global event,” Tiley said.

“He’s won this event 10 times, and we all get along great with Novak and his team. They’re actually fun to be around, and he’s so highly competitive walking on the court – he wants to do nothing but win.”

Tiley also weighed in on the controversy about the tournament not using let technology, which Germany’s Zverev said was “ridiculous”.

“It’s a very simple technology [but] it’s costly. It wasn’t used in the Olympics, Davis Cup or Roland-Garros,” he said.

“You don’t need technology for the let because you can see it and hear it.”

Tiley said scrapping the let-calling technology was not the “final step” to lets being removed from tennis, but he would like to see them gone from the sport.

Asked if the Australian Open could do that as soon as next year, he said “the sooner the better”.

“The juniors have been playing for seven years without lets, and college tennis for 25 years,” Tiley said.

“It does add a little bit of time, but probably not much time.

“It’s just one of those weird things. You don’t play lets on the serve, but you play during the match, or during the point, and it’s like, ‘Why?’. I can’t answer the question.”

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