The Australian Open is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments held each year. It is held each January at Melbourne Park. The tournament was held for the first time in 1905 and was contested on grass through 1987. Since 1988, the tournament has been held on hard courts. 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. It is the only Grand Slam tournament that features indoor play. However, work has already commenced on a retractable roof for Wimbledon's Centre Court, which is expected to be completed by 2009.

Held in the middle of the Australian summer, the Australian Open is famous for its notoriously 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 2008 Australian Open achieving the highest ever day/night attendance record for any Grand Slam tournament of 62,885. The event is worth around $38 m 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 acrylic surface known as Plexicushion. 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, primarily because of the new surface's similarity to DecoTurf, the surface already being used by the US Open.

The most recent tournament was held from 14 January through 27 January 2008. The singles winners were Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova.

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 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.