A big congratulations and a special shout-out to local NT player Hunter Watling, representing Darwin as part of the Australian Open 2025 ballkid team, the largest ever!
Hunter arrived at the Australian Open getting to Melbourne early for training and team-building exercises before Day 1 of the Qualifying rounds.
He has had a lot of highlights across Aussie Grand Slam, including making new friends and impressing everyone with his reflexes – he took a wicked one-hander off a 180km/hr serve!
It’s been amazing to see Hunter’s preparation and skills get recognised as he worked across the 3 biggest arenas at Melbourne Park during his time there, he worked on John Cain Arena, Margaret Court Arena, and the world-famous Rod Laver Arena.
Through ballkidding, Hunter has been up close to an absolute honour-roll of players including top Aussie Alex DeMinaur, women’s world number 2 Iga Swiatek, also Holger Rune, Elena Rybakina, Emerson Jones, Z.Z. Zhang, K. Nishikori – the list goes on.
Hunter’s path to the AO ballkid program was through the NT’s “Top Gun’ ballkid program. Hunter has been a dedicated participant of the NT’s program and through that attended regular training and ballkidded at the NT’s biggest tournaments that bring together the top junior tennis players (May and June 2025) and the best professional players (September).
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