User:Don Lope/Sandbox Australian Open

The Australian Open is an annual tennis tournament created in 1905 and played on outdoor hard courts at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The men's singles was one of the two first events contested in 1905. The Australian Open is played during two weeks mid-January, and has been chronologically the first of the four Grand Slam tournaments of the tennis season since 1987. The event was not held from 1916 to 1918 because of World War I, from 1940 to 1945 because of World War II, and in 1986 because of a date change.

Christchurch and Hastings, New Zealand, and Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne, Australia all held the event, which switched location every year before it settled in 1972 at the Kooyong Stadium, moving to Flinders Park, now Melbourne Park, in 1988. Several calendar changes also took place for the Australian Open, from January to December in 1972 to bypass the January-to-June International Lawn Tennis Federation (ITLF) ban of World Championship Tennis (WCT) players; from late to early December in 1977 to avoid the Christmas holidays, which resulted in having two Opens in the season ; and back to January, when the planned December 1986 edition was moved to early 1987, leaving no Open for the 1986 season.

The men's singles' rules have undergone several changes since the first edition. Since the first championships, the event has been contested in a knockout format, and all matches played at the best-of-five sets, except in 1970, 1973, and 1974, when the first round was played at the best-of-three. All sets were decided since 1905 in the advantage format, with six games and two games difference. The lingering death best-of-twelve points tie-break was introduced in 1971, and used for the first four sets since then, except from 1980 to 1982, when the tie-break was also played in fifth sets. The court surface changed once, from grass (1905–1987) to hard courts, since the move to Flinders Park in 1988.

The champion receives a miniature replica of the silver-gilt Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, named after the 1911 champion, and former Lawn Tennis Association of Australia (LTAA) president, and modeled after the Warwick Vase. In 2009, the winner received prize money of A$2,000,000.

Roy Emerson (winner, 1961, 1963–1967) holds both the record for most titles with six victories, and for most consecutive titles with five from 1963 to 1967.