Australian Open 2010 Live

Click here to Watch Australian Open 2010 Live

The 2010 Australian Open begins on Monday 18^th January and is of course, as every year, the first Grand Slam event of the new season. First played in 1905, this year sees the 105^th staging of the event now seen as one of the top tennis tournaments in the world. Why not join us right here at watchlivetennis.org from this coming Monday 18^th January 2010 to watch live, uninterrupted coverage of all the games right from your computer screen? Live online tennis coverage has never been this good!

The Australian Open is contested at Melbourne Park, but this hasn’t always been the case. It was constructed in 1988 especially to host the Australian Open every year but before that and from 1972 it was hosted at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club, again located in Melbourne. Prior to that, the tournament was rotated between various Australian (and New Zealand) cities, with Melbourne again receiving the lion share of events, followed by Sydney and then Brisbane.

In 1905, when the tournament first started, it was known as the Australasian Championships (hence the two New Zeeland cities being used as hosts). It became the Australian Championships in 1927 then the name we know it as today, the Australian Open, in 1969. The tournament, though, has not always been as popular as it is today. Due to the remoteness of the continent from the rest of the world (but mainly Europe and the United States where all the top players were located at the time) and the vastness of the country itself (3000 kilometres between east and west coasts), only a limited number of foreign players ever competed in the early years. This can be fully understood by the simple fact that back in the 1920’s it used to take approximately forty-five days to travel to Australia from Europe on a ship!

In the early days the Australian Open wasn’t the only, or indeed, even the most important tennis tournament in Australia. Each state had its own competition and some players of the time never even made it across half their vast country to participate in competitions. That being said, probably the Victorian (state of Victoria) Championships were the top tournament in the country. Indeed, most Australian players of the era set their standards by their performances in this particular tournament, or Wimbledon in the far-off United Kingdom.

Fast forwarding a few decades, the Australian Open only really started attracting the top, world class players during the 1980’s, although the timing of the competition (so soon after Christmas and New Year) has also put off a few from making the journey. Indeed, there have been calls to move the event to February so that players have time to build their fitness back up after the festivities of Christmas.

Australian Roy Emerson has won the most men’s singles titles in the history of the competition, winning six times during the sixties. Andre Agassi comes second with four wins. Margaret Court, another Australian, leads the way in the women’s singles with seven victories. Rafael Nadal (Spain) and Serena Williams (United States) are the current men and women title holders.