Australian Open

Australian Open

The Australian Open is the first of the world's four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, held each January at Melbourne Park.

Held in the middle of the Australian summer, the Australian Open is famous for its notoriously hot days. An extreme-heat policy is often put into play when temperatures (and humidity) reach dangerous levels.

Australian Open History
The tournament was first played in 1905 as The Australasian Championships, became the Australian Championships in 1927 and the Australian Open in 1969. Since 1905, the Championships have been staged in five different cities as follows: Melbourne (50 times), Sydney (17 times), Adelaide (14 times), Brisbane (eight times), Perth (three times), and well as in New Zealand, (twice) in 1906 and 1912.

In 1972, it was decided to stage the Tournament in the one city each year, as opposed to visiting various states across the nation, and the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club was selected due to Melbourne attracting the biggest patronage.

Melbourne Park (formerly Flinders Park) was constructed in time for the 1988 Open to meet the demands of the evolving tournament that had outgrown Kooyong's capacity. The move to Melbourne Park was an immediate success, with a 90 per cent increase in attendance in 1988 (266,436) on the previous year at Kooyong (140,000).