Destanee Aiava wants walk-on songs in tennis: 'It would add so much spice'

Tennis arena DJs everywhere, take note: Destanee Aiava wants you to turn the music up. The Aussie says tennis should take a cue from sports like boxing and have players choose what tracks should play when they enter the court.

"Can somebody on the player council put forward a request for walk on songs that we choose ourselves," she asked last week in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

She thinks her idea would add "so much spice" to head-to-heads where two players have a complicated history.

"Especially if [you and your opponent] have beef and [you're] throwing shade from the get go with your choice of walk-on song," she wrote.

Aiava's latest take came after a swing through her home country in which the 24-year-old had a starring role in several plot points. After Australia was eliminated in the group stage of the United Cup, she offered her candid thoughts on the "weird and hostile" experience in a behind-the scenes vlog. She later famously recycled vintage on-court outfits throughout her Australian Open run, successfully qualifying and earning her first-ever Grand Slam main-draw win, and was caught in the middle of Danielle Collins' war of words with the Australian fans inside Kia Arena.

Read more: How about that?! Danielle Collins has a back-and-forth with booing Australian Open crowd

While she had no beef with Collins—"I feel she’s always being her authentic self and ... something that I always promote is just being true to yourself," she recently said—Aiava's concept would certainly be a viral hit should she and Collins ever play again.

Fans quickly agreed, with one user on Reddit saying it's "actually a really cool idea," and others adding that it's also seen in darts and baseball. Users then hurried to give their own suggestions for players, from "What Does the Fox Say?" as a fit for Jannik Sinner, to Taylor Swift and Lil Wayne tracks for Iga Swiatek and Jelena Ostapenko.

Read more: Jelena Ostapenko feels the 'luv' from Lil Wayne in surprise Instagram shoutout

Aiava's fellow Aussie Ellen Perez, a member of the council, was more pragmatic, asking Aiava how it would work for the comparatively shorter walk out onto a tennis court than the areas for other sports—but the world No. 170 already had a solution for that.

"[O]nly the big courts/stadiums and it starts when [you're] in the hallway waiting to walk on," she replied.

And with Aiava's prescient post also coming days before two dramatic Davis Cup encounters between Arthur Fils and Thiago Seyboth Wild, and later, Zizou Bergs and Cristian Garin, she might just be onto something.