Not you. You are at ease with that. And look at two of your other sponsors: American Express and Heineken. So you are kind of telling people: “Get in Debt, Get a Car, Get a Beer.” Which is fine as far as I am concerned, but do not expect me to be in awe at your majesty? At least you’re not that “better-than-thou” type.

Look at your stadiums. Sure, Rod Laver Arena is a wonderful place, but you know what is conspicuously absent? Luxury suites. You know, a place where some dastardly local Aussie Donald Trump can pop champagne for his friends while they talk business and completely ignore the action on court. Rod Laver has no Royal Box (because, the Queen doesn’t visit much and the idea of Australian Royalty would be a total oxymoron) and it does not even have those quirky Phillipe Chatrier boxes, where men dressed by Yves Saint Laurent but looking like Marcel Marceau, doze through another 5-hour clay-court first rounder.

No, Rod Laver Arena is kind of “first come, first serve.” And that is awesome! You have, just there, brought tennis to a level of plebeianism that makes US Open’s Arthur Ashe Stadium, with its thousands of corporate logos, look downright criminal (white collar, but criminal still).

You are one of the big four, but you are kind of the weird one. You are Andy Murray. You are Michael Chang. No, wait, I can’t say that because the one thing you have going for you is that everybody likes you. So, let me think. Ok, got it. You are Vitas Gerulaitis. Yep, you are like one of your former champions, one of the strange names that pepper your resume. Gerulaitis, Roscoe Tanner, Johan Kriek. Try to explain to me how Guillermo Vilas, a clay-court specialist that won only one Roland Garros and never made it past the fourth round of Wimbledon, won you twice. At a time when you were played on grass.

I know it is not your fault that Mr. Bjorn Borg was unable to win the US Open and therefore never wanted to make the trip (he went only once, you recall) because he would not complete a Grand Slam by going down under (I refuse to write ‘undah’, ok?), And you were always played in early December, at a time when the chief method of entertainment in a Boeing 747 was a deck of cards, and so few players wanted to spend Christmas down there. But, still, when you have Mark Edmondson as a former champion, you are definitely in the one-slam wonder territory. Add to that list Petr Korda and Tommy Johansson, and you get me. Insane? You bet. You are the Grand Slam where Marat Safin was most successful. Case closed.

Still, it is all this lunacy that makes you charming. Matches that start at midnight and finish at 4 am, with spectators STILL in the seats (what is it with these people, don’t you guys work?). You have that wacko immigration streak so that whenever a Serb plays a Croat on any court, it is the 1990s in the Balkans all over again. For a few years there, you had that weather that literally melted the court, so that every tennis player knew that it would be a good idea to call Lloyds and insure just his/her ankles.

You have got to be the only venue in the world that had an arena named Vodafone, and a chair umpire saying, “Please turn off your cell phones” within it. Next thing you know, you are going to name one stadium the Foster Lager Arena, and the chair umpire will explicitly tell the crowd to refrain from audibly breaking wind.

In short, we like you, mate. Or sheila. You could not care less about gender (Margaret Court Arena, really? Margaret Court Arena? That’s like the USO naming one court after Anita Bryant!) because, in reality, you seem to care very little about protocol, about etiquette, about class. You seem to care about good tennis, about keeping up the name of Australia and its legendary tennis tradition, and starting the year, for the rest of us, on a high note.

And you do a fine job at that. Have a beer on us, mate. Or a million. You deserve it.