In 2007, when Roger Federer dubbed the Australian Open the “Happy Slam,” he crystallized a sentiment that tennis players and fans had been feeling for years. Sure, maybe it’s the fresh outlook of a new season or the Aussie summer sun in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere’s cold winter. But it’s more than that. What transpires over the course of two weeks at Melbourne Park has a vibe the other majors just can’t beat. This fortnight is not just a competition — it’s a celebration of all things tennis. Yes, the Australian Open just hits different.
But it wasn’t always that way. Throughout the 1970s, top players routinely skipped the major Down Under — the trip too far, the money too low, and the courts too unplayable. Even the grass-savvy like Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe, who flatly said at one point the surface was “not good enough to play tennis on,” took a pass on the wild courts of the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club for most of their early careers.
For fans, the experience at Kooyong was a mixed bag. It was peak Aussie casual, but that wasn’t always a compliment. Seats were few, which put most fans on blankets in the grass or behind a rope in standing room only. To view other courts, a bit of a hike was required. As Australian photographer Roger Gould recalled to Racquet, “To watch matches on some of the outside courts you had to sit up on a mound at the edge of the railway and look over the top of the court wire enclosure.”
