HistoryThe 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 St Kilda Road, Melbourne in 1905.
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 Australian Open has been staged in five different cities as follows: Melbourne (50 times), Sydney (17 times), Adelaide (14 times), Brisbane (8 times), Perth (3 times), as well as in New Zealand, (2 times) in 1906 Christchurch and 1912 Hastings. In 1972, it was decided to stage the tournament in the same city each year, 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 tournament 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).
Because of its geographic remoteness very few foreign players entered this tournament at the beginning. (In the 1920s it took about 45 days to make the trip by ship from Europe to Australia.) The first tennis players who came by aircraft were the US Davis Cup players in November 1946. Even inside the country many players could not travel easily. When the Championships were held in Perth, no persons from Victoria or New South Wales crossed by train, a distance of approximately 3,000 kilometres 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.
Many players had never played the Austral(as)ian amateur or open championships: the Ren shaws, the Dohertys, William Larned, Maurice McLoughlin, Beals Wright, Bill Johnston, Bill Tilden, René Lacoste, Henri Cochet, Bobby Riggs, Jack Kramer, Ted Schroeder, Pancho Gonzales, Budge Patty, Manuel Santana, Jan Kodes and others, while Brookes, Ellsworth Vines, Jaroslav Drobny, Manuel Orantes, Ilie N?stase at 35 years old, and Bjorn Borg just came once.
From 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 the National Tennis League (NTL), which employed Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Andres Gimeno, Pancho Gonzales, Roy Emerson and Fred Stolle, prevented its players from entering the tournament because the guarantees were insufficient, and the tournament was ultimately won by Arthur Ashe.
In 1983, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe and Mats Wilander all entered the tournament, with Wilander having to play the Davis Cup at Kooyong a few days after the tournament. He won both the Australian Open and the Davis Cup. 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, and in 1988 the tournament was first held at Flinders Park (later renamed Melbourne Park) on Rebound Ace.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, just after World War I, the 1919 tournament was held in January 1920 (the 1920 tournament was played in March); the 1923 tournament in Brisbane took place in August when the weather is 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), thus there was no tournament in 1986. Since 1987 the Australian Open date has not changed.
Another change of venue was mooted in 2008, with New South Wales authorities making clear their desire to re-locate the tournament to Glebe Island (Sydney) in 2016, when the Melbourne contract runs out. Wayne Kayler-Thomson, the head ofthe Victorian Events Industry Council, was adamant that Melbourne should retain the event, and, in a scathing attack of the New South Wales authorities, said that, "It is disappointing that NSW cannot be original and seek their own events instead of trying to cannibalize other Australian cities.