Australian Open anyone ??

Last Sunday , the first major of  the year began….
Hard to imagine that in the not too distant past this event was referred as “ the little slam that could”….
Initially it was played on grass & dates back to 1905. It was originally called the Australasian Championships, and fluctuated between 5 Australian and 2 New Zealand cities. It wasn’t officially a major till 1925. In 1927 the name changed to the Australian Championships.
Back then, Australian grass courts were so popular, that thousands of them were scattered throughout the nation. Australia was a major tennis powerhouse, second only to the US. Three majors (Australian, US Open and Wimbledon) out of four were being played on grass.
 In 1968 it was finally coined the Australian Open, and a year later moved to a suburb of Melbourne called Kooyong.
By the 70’s hard courts began taking over grass, as primary surface. The Aussie tennis machine started declining. The era’s big names (Conners, Borg, McEnroe, Navratilova and Evert) avoided the tournament because of the remoteness, the inconvenient dates (around Christmas and New Year's Day), and the low prize money.
In 1988 an effort to revive the slam started. It was permanently moved to Flinders Park (later renamed Melbourne Park) .A new national tennis center facility was built. It features two stadium courts with sliding roofs (for extreme heat and rain).The tournament experienced a renaissance and top players and fans returned making it more popular than ever before.

The 2010 Australian Open achieving the highest ever single-day day/night attendance record for any Grand Slam tournament of 77,043 and an overall attendance of 653,860.

Current 2011 singles title holders are ATP: Novak  Djokovic , and WTA : Kim Clijsters.

To win this slam, one has to endure extreme heat and a weird “down under” schedule with plenty of night matches.