Anatomy of a crowd

The crowd shimmers in the bright glare of the day. It waves. It consumes its iced drinks and fruit. Its banter flows across its ranks. The court is its place of worship. The players are its shamens, the metaphysics of their movement and timing its portal to the divine. It enjoys the sound of its roaring and is surprised by its capacity for silence. Programmed by the movement of a ball pregnant with meaning, its many thousand heads alternate between order and chaos, its surface smooth or rough, like the sea. In the end, it will dissasemble into its many parts, though not before it has eaten its fill of miracles.

The Australian Open is more than one of the world’s greatest international events. It’s a nationally and locally revered institutuion, with over two thirds of its 800,000 visitors coming from Melbourne itself. 

Images by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash and Eddie Jim for Stokehouse’s Eton mess tennis-themed dessert.