The world’s top tennis stars joined forces on Sunday in front of a packed house on Rod Laver Arena in their bid to raise funds for the victims of Tuesday’s Haiti earthquake.

Roger Federer was joined by Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Kim Clijsters, Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Stosur in a fun filled doubles exhibition event billed ‘The Hit for Haiti’.

Nearly 17,000 tennis fans, who queued from early this morning to get tickets to the special fundraiser, were entertained by the players and Champions Series player and former Australian Open Champion Jim Courier who umpired the match.

The players were split into two teams – Team Red (Federer, Hewitt, Stosur and Williams) and Blue (Nadal, Clijsters, Djokovic and Roddick) with team members rotating in and out throughout the mixed doubles match. Aussie Bernard Tomic joined in the fun towards the latter stage of the match as part of Team Blue, but it was Team Red that eventually won 7-6.

World No.1 Federer announced the charity exhibition on Saturday afternoon and players quickly rallied round him to support the idea.

“Yesterday morning I thought we should do something and within twenty four hours we were able to pull this off” Federer said. “I am happy it was such a successful event, it was a lot of fun and for us, the players, it was wonderful to see.”

Tickets to the event were sold for $10 with children under the age of twelve given free entry. All money raised at today’s event will be donated directly to Partners in Health, a charity based in Haiti for the last 20 years.

In addition to ticket sales, Australian Open staff collected donations on site and a number of players have made individual contributions. Proceeds raised from the event, along with significant donations made from the ATP World Tour, Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, ITF, Grand Slam Committee and Tennis Australia will exceed half a million dollars.

AUD$159,000 was raised through ticket sales and public donations on Sunday alone.

“It’s fantastic to see the tennis family from around the globe band together to help make a difference in this time of need” said Australian Open Tournament Director Craig Tiley. “I would like to thank the players, staff and everyone involved in pulling off this event in such a short amount of time.” « back