The 2012 Australian Open men’s qualifying singles event begins on Wednesday 11 January at 10am local time in Melbourne. The qualifying event is scheduled to be completed on Saturday 14 January and is played at the same venue as the main event, unlike at Wimbledon. To watch the tennis in Singapore minus 3 hours from the local time in Melbourne.

The great news is YOU can attend the entire qualifying event without having to pay for a ticket, yes, it is free entry for the entire qualifying event, so don’t miss it! If you cannot be there, then you will be able to watch the qualifying rounds of the Australian Open free of charge from the OnCourt Advantage homepage courtesy of Australian Open TV.

Please leave a comment below this article regarding anything YOU would like to know about in tennis, have explained or suggest for me to write about here at OnCourt Advantage. Click this link for details about how you can buy Australian Open Official tennis tickets you will also find to the FULL details about: prize money and ATP ranking points earned per round plus more details about the qualifying event. As soon as the qualifying draw is announced on Tuesday 10 January it will be added right here-> …

There are 32 seeds in the qualifying which means that the highest 32 ranked players at the cut-off date are seeded to meet each other in “The Qualifying Round”. The Qualifying Round is the final round that decides which 16 players qualify for the main draw. 

The cut-off date for acceptances into the 2012 Australian Open qualifying singles draw was 5 December 2011. Players were accepted into the qualifying draw according to their ranking on December 5th. To determine who the 32 seeds are in the qualifying event, the rankings released on Monday 9 January 2012 will be used to identify the seeds (and not the rankings at the time of qualifying on December 5th).

A seeded player occupies one of every four spots in the qualifying draw. The men’s qualifying draw has 128 spots as compared to the women’s qualifying that has 96 spots, which is why there are 32 men’s seeds as opposed to 24 women’s seeds. There are more men’s qualifying matches to be played, which is why the men’s qualifying begins a day earlier. So it follows that there are more spots allocated to qualifiers in the men’s singles event i.e. 16 as compared to the 12 spots for qualifiers in the women’s main draw.

Pictured above is 4-time Australian Open men’s singles champion Roger FEDERER captured setting a perfect example of exactly what YOU need to be doing at the contact point with his famous forehand ground stroke. The above picture was taken on 28 March 2011 at the Sony Ericsson Open Masters 1000 event in Miami, USA. The latest on Federer is that he Federer retired today after making the semi finals at the Qatar Open with a back injury to make sure he is fit for the Australian Open.

The 30-year-old Federer won his Australian Open singles titles in 2004, 2006, 2007 and in 2010. His 2010 Australian Open is the Swiss former World No.1′s most recent Grand Slam singles victory after making the semi finals in 2011. The 1.85m Federer will be doing everything in his power at the Australian Open to win his 17th Grand Slam singles title after being unable to go all the way in the Grand Slams in 2011. 2011 was the first year out of the past 9 years that Federer did not win a Grand Slam singles title.

The players who lose in the 1st round of qualifying receive 2,860 Australian dollars but do NOT receive any ranking points. Players that win through to the 2nd round of qualifying but are then defeated; earn $5,710 and 16 ATP ranking points. Players who win through to the 3rd round of qualifying but are then defeated, earn $11,440 and 24 ATP ranking points.

The 16 players who qualify, the 2nd round and 3rd round losers in the qualifying all receive more ranking points than a player who is directly accepted into the main draw and then loses his 1st round match (the direct acceptance would be awarded 10 ATP ranking points for losing in the 1st round of the main draw).

Players, who qualify for the main draw will earn a minimum of $20,000 and 35 ATP ranking points if they are defeated in the 1st round of the main draw. The qualifiers have the opportunity to really improve their ranking because the Grand Slam tournaments offer the most ranking points and in many ways it is better to compete in the qualifying than to be given a wild card into the main draw.

The seeds do not receive a BYE in the 1st round of the qualifying event. All players must win three matches in a row in order to qualify. The qualifying draws are different to main draws because these events do not play off until there is one undefeated player. Therefore, the No.1 seed and the No.2 seed are not separated at the opposite ends of the draw.

The Top 32 seeds in the main draw of qualifying have ALL been separated from each other as they are seeded to be the players who do qualify. The qualifying matches are best-of-3 sets and NOT best-of-5 sets like the main draw singles matches. The first two sets are tiebreak sets and the final set is an advantage set. In an advantage set, if the set score is tied at six games all the players continue to play until one player gains a two game advantage.

© photo credit: sr_cranks