It was Saturday morning, so the story goes, two days before the start of the Australian Open, Roger Federer had an idea to raise money for Haiti earthquake victims.  He quickly contacted friends and tournament organizers and they quickly got the word out so fans could attend this impromptu event.

Federer convinced Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal, Kim Clijsters among several others to join him for the event where fans could be entertained by some casual matches.  With the WTA, ITF, and ATP providing matching funds, the event raised about $600,000 with fans raising about $200,000 of that amount.

Recently, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, “bought” the Indian Wells tournament.  He also put in a million dollars in the second Hit for Haiti.  With more time to plan, the second Hit for Haiti involved 8 players, four women and four men.  Martina Navratilova, Justine Henin (who had just lost her match to Gisele Dulko), Lindsay Davenport, and Steffi Graf played a 8-game pro-set with no-ad scoring.  As usual, the announcers tried to make it sound like it was serious hitting when it was anything but.

The highlight was the men’s event that followed with Roger Federer teaming up with Pete Sampras and Rafael Nadal teaming up with Andre Agassi.   Agassi has always been more of the showman and tended to dominate the entire event.  At one point, Pete Sampras made fun of Andre Agassi’s famous walk, which kinda resembles C3PO walking.  Agassi then did his impression, but instead of copying any of Sampras’s mannerisms, he pulled out the pockets of his sweatpants and essentially accused Sampras of being a cheap tipper.  Sampras was a bit peeved at this accusation and wore his emotion on his face, even though Sampras knows Agassi is an attention whore, and loves the spotlight on himself.

Twice Agassi said he would serve at a certain speed and twice he was within 1 mph of the speed he said he would hit it at.  Agassi spent the match in long sweatpants of sorts (the athletic stretchy kind) and Sampras wondered how long he would wear them.  He pulled up the pants leg to show how white his legs were.  He had been too embarrassed to show them off.

Prior to the match, Agassi was asked what he thought of his wife’s performance, and you said “Do you mean her performance on court?” letting innuendo do the work.  During the match, Agassi noted how nice Federer and Rafa’s hair was and how they were teamed with two balding guys.  Sampras said that he still had some hair.  Agassi replied “Let it go!  You’ll find yourself a lot freer!” or something to that effect, suggesting Sampras was in denial about his thinning crown.

Rafa, for his part, was all smiles.  He couldn’t stop smiling from beginning to end.  He didn’t have a lot to say, as English is still a challenge for him.  Roger Federer got in a few words here and there.  When asked how he and Rafa were so nice to each other but it seemed Pete and Andre were getting snippy with each other, Roger said that he and Rafa were going to be like that soon enough, and he looked forward to it (unlikely, again because Rafa’s mastery of English and humor is not so great, and he’s far too modest to take cheap shots).

Overall, it was a nice event to raise money for Haiti.  Such events are generally as much entertainment as anything else that has the side benefit of raising money.  In a way, it’s much like these 5K runs that raise money for charity.  Many runners want to run competitively, but these events tend to be a little expensive to run in (about 40 dollars or so).  Making it part of charity allows people to feel less guilty about plunking the money done for a race.

The last time Roger did this, he proceeded to have a great Australian Open and win the crown.  Will he do so again?  Time will tell!