De Jenken first female in charge

FRENCHWOMAN Sandra De Jenken became the first female umpire to take charge of a men’s Grand Slam final yesterday when Roger Federer beat Fernando Gonzalez to win his third Australian Open.

Her turn in the chair came at the conclusion of a tournament that attracted a record crowd, with 554,858 people passing through the Melbourne Park turnstiles over the two-week event.

They ate their way through 41,109 buckets of French fries, 13,600 hot dogs and 21,323 pizzas, drinking 154,000 bottles of water and 126,353 soft drinks.

There were some 2,750 racquets strung during the championship, using 33 kilometres (20.5 miles) of string.

It was the first time the tournament used the HawkEye video line-calling technology on centre court, with the players challenging 188 calls and being found to be correct 86 times, a 46% success rate.

The official website www.australianopen.com had 21 million hits from 4.4 million visitors.

More than 30% of Internet visitors were from Europe, 22% from the United States, 15% from Australia and 11.5% from Asia.

The most viewed profiles belonged to women’s finalists Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams and men’s finalists Federer and Gonzalez, with American Andy Roddick also attracting interest.