The Australian Open: a tournament analysis

Since 1988 the Australia Open has taken place in the Melbourne Park, a sports venue with four covered courts and 22 open courts. This is the first of the four Gran Slams in the year and takes place in January.

The Australian Open has been played at a few different venues throughout its history, both in Australia and New Zealand. This tournament has two types of courts, grass, and hard courts.

As with all the other Grand Slam tournaments, the Australian Open has the following categories:

• Men’s singles
• Women’s singles
• Men’s doubles
• Women’s doubles
• Mixed doubles

During the last few years, a new category appeared for athletes in wheelchairs.

The two main courts for this tournament each have a retractable roof to avoid any weather problems during the games.

The Rod Laver Arena is in Melbourne Park, and it’s home to the Australian Open. This stadium, constructed in 1988, has a capacity of 15,000 spectators.

Tournament characteristics

As we mentioned before, there have been a few different venues for this tournament in the past, previously on grass courts and now on hard courts.

In 2008, the tournament installed its new court surface at Rebound Ace, after 20 years. The new court surface is made of Plexicushion which allows the ball to slow down in comparison to a concrete court. Therefore, it reduces the athletes’ exhaustion levels.

Hard courts are made of concrete and they are considered fast courts when compared to clay and grass. And so, these are considerably more demanding for athletes.

The Australian Open takes place in January every year, which is the middle of the summer season in the southern hemisphere. Due to the possibility of extremely high temperatures, there is a rule for these eventualities.

In 2015, the rule consisted of delaying the following games when temperatures reach over 35 degrees Celcius. The tournament then had to lower the temperature, using the roof, in order to continue the games.

Due to this, the following games had to wait until the temperature had significantly cooled down. After 2015, the rule changed, the tournament decided that when the temperature reached 40 degrees Celcius the game would have to stop.

The latest winners of the Australian Open

Here, we have made a list of the winners of the Australian Open in this century by category, starting with the men’s singles:

• Novak Djokovic who has won the Australian Open six times, in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016.
• Meanwhile, Roger Federer has also won six times, in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2017, 2018.

As for women’s singles, here are the biggest winners of this century:

• Serena Williams is the biggest winner with seven wins, in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2015, and 2017.
• Angelique Kerber in 2016
• Caroline Wozniacki in 2018

In men’s doubles, there are some recurrent winners too:

• The Bryan brothers, Bob and Mike, who have won this tournament six times, in 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, and in 2013.

Meanwhile, in the women’s doubles category the biggest winners are:

• The Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, winning in 2009 and in 2010.
• Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci who won the trophy in 2013 and 2014.
• Bethanie Matteck-Sand and Lucie Safarova who won in 2015 and 2017.

Last but not least, in the mixed doubles categories, the biggest winner has been Daniel Nestor. He won his first Australian Open with Katarina Srebotnik in 2011 and his second with Kristina Mladenovic in 2014.