Australian Open

Saturday 23 Jan 2010
The Australian Open is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments held each year. The tournament is held in January at Melbourne Park. The tournament was held for the first time in 1905 and was contested on grass until 1987. Since 1988, the tournament has been held on hard courts at Melbourne Park. Mats Wilander is the only male player to have won the tournament on both grass and hard courts.

Like all other Grand Slam tournaments, there are men's and women's singles competitions; men's, women's, and mixed doubles; and junior's and master's competitions.

The two main courts used in the tournament are Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena and feature retractable roofs, which can be shut in case of rain or extreme heat. The Australian Open and Wimbledon are the only Slams with indoor play.

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

The Australian Open typically has very high attendance, with the 2009 Australian Open achieving the highest ever single-day day/night attendance record for any Grand Slam tournament of 66,018. The event is worth around £38 million ($A68 million) to the Australian economy.

In 2008, the Rebound Ace surface, which had been in place for the past 20 years at Melbourne Park, was replaced by a cushioned, medium-paced, acrylic surface known as 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.