The Australian Open, held in Melbourne each January, attracts the world's best tennis players to Melbourne Park. Prestige is part of the draw, and I'm sure the $11 million or so in prize money on offer doesn't hurt.

It also draws crowds close to 400,000 spectators over the two weeks of the event. Many of these fans believe that by painting their faces to resemble their national flag, players from their home country will perform significantly better. Especially popular amongst Swedish fans, there seems to be no firm statistical evidence to prove this is actually the case.

While the Australian Open is in essentially an outdoor tournament, centre court at Melbourne Park is equipped with a retractable roof and guidelines are in place for the closure of the roof in wet weather and extreme heat, a not uncommon phenomenon in midsummer Melbourne.