All about Australian Open

The Australian Open is chronologically the first of the four official tournaments that make up the Grand Slam of tennis. It takes place every January at the sports complex located in Melbourne Park, in the city of Melbourne.

Its first editions as the Australian Open were played on the grass courts of Kooyong, in the southeast of the city of Melbourne, but in 1988, and due to the loss of notoriety, it was decided to move the competition to its current location in Melbourne Park (then known as Flinders Park), a new complex with concrete tennis courts next to the Melbourne Cricket Ground at the southern end of the financial district. Mats Wilander was the only player capable of winning the tournament on grass and on concrete.

Like the other three Grand Slam tournaments, the competition is divided into categories, with individual and doubles categories for both men and women, as well as mixed doubles (that is, pairs made up of a man and a woman), in addition to competitions. for junior and veteran players. In recent years, competitions for wheelchair players have also been included.

Between 1977 and 1985, the Australian Open took place in December, returning to its original location in January 1987. For that reason, two editions of the tournament were held in 1977, one in January and one in December, and in 1986 the tournament was not held.

The two main courts of the complex are named after Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena and both have retractable roofs, thus allowing the courts to close and continue to play in the event of rain or extreme heat. Currently, the All England Lawn Tennis Club in London, the US Open (with its two main courts), the Caja Mágica del Open in Madrid, and the ATP in Hamburg are the only ones in which there is a retractable roof for practice. of tennis, since the installation work of the retractable roof on the central court was completed.

Held in the middle of the southern summer, the tournament is famous for its days of extreme heat. When this happens, it is usual for the game to stop and the game to not resume until non-dangerous values ​​of temperature and humidity are recovered.

The public success of the tournament is remarkable, achieving in 2008 the record of daily attendance at a Grand Slam tournament with a total of 62,885 attendees.

In 2008, the tournament’s new playing surface was released. After 20 years of using Rebound Ace courts, it was decided to change the material of the playing court for a new material called Plexicushion, which allows the ball to go at a slower speed, absorbs less heat, and causes less wear on the players. This change caused all the preparatory tournaments for the Australian Open to change their playing surfaces. However, the surface change led to some controversy due to the similarity of the new material to DecoTurf, the surface used at the US Open. Since 2020 GreenSet is the new material used on the courts of Melbourne Park.

Australian Open History

The Australian Open is managed by Tennis Australia, formerly the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia (LTAA), and was first played at the Warehouseman’s Cricket Ground in Melbourne in November 1905. The facility is now known as the Albert Reserve Tennis Centre and was a grass court.

The tournament was first known as the Australasian Championships. It became the Australian Championships in 1927. Then, in 1969, it became the Australian Open. Since 1905, the Australian Open has been staged in five Australian cities: Melbourne (55 times), Sydney (17 times), Adelaide (14 times), Brisbane (7 times), Perth (3 times), and two New Zealand cities: Christchurch (1906) and Hastings (1912).

Though started in 1905, the tournament was not designated as being a major championship until 1924, by the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) at a 1923 meeting. The tournament committee changed the structure of the tournament to include seeding at that time. In the period of 1916–1918, no tournament was organized due to World War I.

During World War II, the tournament was not held in the period from 1941–1945. In 1972, it was decided to stage the tournament in Melbourne each year because it attracted the biggest patronage of any Australian city. The tournament was played at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club from 1972 until its move to the new Melbourne Park complex in 1988.

The new facilities at Melbourne Park (formerly Flinders Park) were envisaged to meet the demands of a tournament that had outgrown Kooyong’s capacity. The move to Melbourne Park was an immediate success, with a 90 percent increase in attendance in 1988 (266,436) on the previous year at Kooyong (140,000).

Because of Australia’s geographic remoteness, very few foreign players entered this tournament in the early 20th century. In the 1920s, the trip by ship from Europe to Australia took about 45 days. The first tennis players who came by boats were the US Davis Cup players in November 1946.

Even inside Australia, many players could not travel easily. When the tournament was held in Perth, no one from Victoria or New South Wales crossed by train, a distance of about 3,000 kilometers (1,900 mi) between the East and West coasts. In Christchurch in 1906, of a small field of 10 players, only two Australians attended and the tournament was won by a New Zealander.

The first tournaments of the Australasian Championships suffered from the competition of the other Australasian tournaments. Before 1905, all Australian states, and New Zealand, had their own championships; the first being organized in 1880 in Melbourne and called the Championship of the Colony of Victoria (later the Championship of Victoria). In those years, the best two players – Australian Norman Brookes (whose name is now written on the men’s singles cup) and New Zealander Anthony Wilding – almost did not play this tournament.

Brookes took part once and won in 1911, and Wilding entered and won the competition twice (1906 and 1909). Their meetings in the Victorian Championships (or at Wimbledon) helped to determine the best Australasian players. Even when the Australasian Championships were held in Hastings, New Zealand, in 1912, Wilding, though three times Wimbledon champion, did not come back to his home country. It was a recurring problem for all players of the era. Brookes went to Europe only three times, where he reached the Wimbledon Challenge Round once and then won Wimbledon twice.

Thus, many players had never played the Australian amateur or open championships: the Doherty brothers, William Larned, Maurice McLoughlin, Beals Wright, Bill Johnston, Bill Tilden, René Lacoste, Henri Cochet, Bobby Riggs, Jack Kramer, Ted Schroeder, Pancho Gonzales, Budge Patty, and others, while Brookes, Ellsworth Vines, Jaroslav Drobný, came just once. Even in the 1960s and 1970s, when travel was less difficult, leading players such as Manuel Santana, Jan Kodeš, Manuel Orantes, Ilie Năstase (who only came once, when 35 years old) and Björn Borg came rarely or not at all.

Beginning in 1969, when the first Australian Open was held on the Milton Courts at Brisbane, the tournament was open to all players, including professionals who were not allowed to play the traditional circuit. Nevertheless, except for the 1969 and 1971 tournaments, many of the best players missed this championship until 1982, because of the remoteness, the inconvenient dates (around Christmas and New Year’s Day), and the low prize money. In 1970, George MacCall’s National Tennis League, which employed Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Andrés Gimeno, Pancho Gonzales, Roy Emerson, and Fred Stolle, prevented its players from entering the tournament because the guarantees were insufficient. The tournament was won by Arthur Ashe.

In 1983, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe, and Mats Wilander entered the tournament. Wilander won the singles title and both his Davis Cup singles rubbers in the Swedish loss to Australia at Kooyong shortly after. Following the 1983 Australian Open, the International Tennis Federation prompted the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia to change the site of the tournament, because the Kooyong stadium was then inappropriate to serve such a big event. In 1988 the tournament was first held at Flinders Park (later renamed Melbourne Park). The change of the venue also led to a change of the court surface from grass to a hard court surface known as Rebound Ace.

Mats Wilander was the only player to win the tournament on both grass and hard courts. In 2008, after being used for 20 years, the Rebound Ace was replaced by a cushioned, medium-paced, acrylic surface known as Plexicushion Prestige. Roger Federer and Serena Williams are the only players to win the Australian Open on both Rebound Ace and Plexicushion Prestige. The main benefits of the new surface are better consistency and less retention of heat because of a thinner top layer. This change was accompanied by changes in the surfaces of all lead-up tournaments to the Australian Open. The change was controversial because of the new surface’s similarity to DecoTurf, the surface used by the US Open.

Before the Melbourne Park stadium era, tournament dates fluctuated as well, in particular in the early years because of the climate of each site or exceptional events. For example, the 1919 tournament was held in January 1920 (the 1920 tournament was played in March) and the 1923 tournament in Brisbane took place in August when the weather was not too hot and wet. After the first 1977 tournament was held in December 1976 – January 1977, the organizers chose to move the next tournament forward a few days, then a second 1977 tournament was played (ended on 31 December), but this failed to attract the best players.

From 1982 to 1985, the tournament was played in mid-December. Then it was decided to move the next tournament to mid-January (January 1987), which meant no tournament was organized in 1986. Since 1987, the Australian Open date has not changed. Some top players, including Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, have said in the past that the tournament is held too soon after the Christmas and New Year holidays, and expressed a desire to consider shifting the tournament to February. Such a change, however, would move the tournament outside the summer school holiday period, potentially impacting attendance figures.

New South Wales and overseas authorities proposed becoming the new hosts of the tournament in 2008, though such a move never materialized. In any case, it was around this time the Melbourne Park precinct commenced upgrades which enhanced facilities for players and spectators.

Notably, a retractable roof was placed over Margaret Court Arena, making the Open the first of the four Grand Slams to have retractable rooves available on three of their main courts. The player and administrative facilities, as well as access points for spectators, were improved and the tournament site expanded its footprint out of Melbourne Park into nearby Birrarung Marr. A fourth major show court, seating 5,000 people are expected to be completed by late 2021.

In December 2018, tournament organizers announced the Australian Open would follow the examples set by Wimbledon and the US Open and introduce tie-breaks in the final sets of men’s and women’s singles matches. Unlike Wimbledon and the US Open, which initiate conventional tie-breaks at 12-12 games and 6-6 games respectively, the Australian Open utilizes a first to 10 points breaker at 6 games all.

In 2020, the tournament organizers decided to replace the official court manufacturer with GreenSet, though retained the iconic blue cushioned acrylic hard court.

In 2021, in an effort to reduce the staff on-site due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tournament director Craig Tiley announced the introduction of a live electronic line calls system. Instead of line judges, movement-activated and pre-recorded voices were used for the calls “Out”, “Foot Fault” and “Fault” in all courts. This technology was developed by Hawk-Eye Live and the tournament was the first Grand Slam to use it.

Australian Open Courts

In 1988, the Australian Open moved to Melbourne Park, which is located in the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct. Since then it is always held here. Following are the courts:

Australian Open Formats

Ranking Points

Ranking points have varied at the Australian Open through the years for the men and women but presently players receive the following points:

Price Money

The total prize money for the 2021 tournament is AUD $80,000,000. The prize money distribution is as follows:

Australian Open Champions

Australian Open Men’s Singles Champions

Australian Open Women’s Singles Champions

Australian Open Men’s & Women’s Doubles Champions

Australian Open Mixed Doubles Champions