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, now known as the Albert Reserve Tennis Centre, 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, it has been staged 110 times in five Australian cities:
Melbourne (66 times),
Sydney (17 times),
Adelaide (15 times),
Brisbane (7 times),
Perth (3 times), and two
New Zealand cities:
Christchurch (
1906) and
Hastings (
1912). In the period of 1916–1918, no tournament was organised due to
World War I. During
World War II, the tournament was not held from 1941 to 1945. In 1972, it was decided to stage the tournament in
Melbourne each year because it attracted the biggest patronage of any Australian city. Because of Australia's geographic remoteness, very few foreign players entered the 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 aircraft 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 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 main court of the Australian Open, in 2023 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 organised 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 Austral(as)ian 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.
Open era at the Australian Open in 2005 prior to its redevelopment.
Rod Laver Arena is in the background. 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 the 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. surface. 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. 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 a first 1977 tournament was held in December 1976 – January 1977, the organisers 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 organised in 1986. From 1987 to 2026, the Australian Open date has not changed (except for
2021, when it was postponed by three weeks to February due to the
COVID-19 pandemic). In 2026, the tournament will be played on late January. 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 Australia's summer school holiday period, potentially impacting attendance figures. Prior to 1996, the Australian Open rewarded fewer
ATP rankings points than the other three Grand Slam tournaments. The reason cited by the ATP was the prize money offered by the Australian Open was far less than the other three majors.
Melbourne Park expansion that opened in 2022
New South Wales and overseas authorities proposed becoming the new hosts of the tournament in 2008, though such a move never materialised. In any case, it was around this time the
Melbourne Park precinct commenced upgrades which enhanced facilities for players and spectators. The precinct also aimed to provide more options of refreshments especially coffee to entertain the growing number of local and international visitors. Notably a
retractable roof was placed over Margaret Court Arena, making the Open the first of the four Grand Slams to have retractable roofs 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 was completed in late 2021, along with the rest of decade-long redevelopment, which included the
Centrepiece ballroom, function and media building, as well as other upgraded facilities for players, administrators and spectators. In December 2018, tournament organisers 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 initiated conventional tie-breaks at 12–12 games and 6–6 games respectively, the Australian Open utilises a first to 10 points breaker at 6 games all. In 2020, the tournament organisers decided to replace the official court manufacturer to
GreenSet, though retained the iconic blue cushioned acrylic hardcourt. In 2021, in an effort to reduce the number of staff on-site due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, all matches used
electronic line judging. It marked the first-ever Grand Slam tournament to exclusively use electronic line judging; the
2020 US Open used it for matches outside of the two main stadium courts. The Australian Open produced a range of
NFTs in 2022. Starting in
2024, the Australian Open began on a Sunday, one day earlier than usual. Day sessions on Rod Laver Arena and Margaret Court Arena featured a minimum of two matches (down from three) in an effort to reduce the possibility of matches finishing in the early hours of the following morning. The
2025 Australian Open was the first Australian Open to present
pickleball. From January 24 to the 26th the
AO Pickleball Slam tournament was held on Court 3 at Melbourne Park. The invitational tournament awarded in prize money to some of Australia's top players and international participants. == Courts ==