1988: Melbourne Park revitalizes the Australian Open

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The 1970s was the decade of the pro-tour invasion. In those days the momentum was with the ever-expanding circuits; they were played in modern arenas for big money, and had hopes of competing with the world’s major team sports. The Grand Slams, by comparison, were still played in creaky private clubs built in the early years of the century, and were run by the game’s even creakier old amateur guard. The majors looked like a relic from tennis’s fast-vanishing past.

Nowhere was this more true than at Melbourne’s Kooyong Stadium, site of the least-grand of the Slams at the time, the Australian Open. By the early 70s, the sun was setting on that country’s 20-year run of dominance; the stars that took the Aussies’ place were from almost exclusively from the U.S., Europe, and South America, and they were happy to avoid what was then a late-season trip Down Under (the tournament was played in December for much of the 70s and 80s). Bjorn Borg played the Aussie Open in 1974 and never went back; Jimmy Connors made the trip twice, in ’74 and ’75; Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova each made one appearance in the mid-70s, before skipping it until the early 80s. Not only was the Aussie Open in an inconvenient location, at an inconvenient time of year, the main court at Kooyong had an inconvenient incline at one end.

By the 80s, though, the old guard had weathered the professional storm and was prepared for a counterattack. World Team Tennis, the biggest threat to the game’s traditional calendar, and the majors’ place at the heart of it, had folded in 1978. That same year, the US Open moved from the overcrowded West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills to a much larger public facility, and a new court surface, at Flushing Meadows. The French Open, led by longtime amateur official Philippe Chatrier, began a revamp and expansion; perhaps its most beloved court, the Bullring, opened in 1981. That year Wimbledon had been put into crisis mode by the “You cannot be serious!” antics of John McEnroe; there were rumblings from the top players that they could live without the tournament and its increasingly outdated grass courts. Change came slowly at Wimbledon, but it eventually came, as the famously authoritarian event began to cultivate a friendlier relationship with its players.

That left Australia out in the cold; or, perhaps more accurately, on the dark side of the moon. As the 80s started, some top players began to trickle back Down Under. The prestige of the Slams was being restored, and, appearances to the contrary, the Aussie Open did still qualify as a Slam. Navratilova returned in 1980, Evert in ’81, and three top-ranked men—McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, and Mats Wilander—showed up at Kooyong in 1983. But the club’s good fortune proved to be its undoing. The crowds that those players drew helped convince the ITF that a new facility was needed to house the tournament.

Tennis Australia’s location shift echoed the one that the USTA had made when it moved the U.S. Open to Flushing Meadows a decade earlier. In 1988, Flinders Park (now called Melbourne Park) opened near downtown Melbourne. Flinders, like Flushing, was called the National Tennis Center and was a public facility. It also featured a new hard surface, rubbery Rebound Ace, that was designed to be as neutral and fair to all playing styles as possible. But Flinders went Flushing one better: The main stadium, Rod Laver Arena, came with the game’s first retractable roof. Overall, Flinders Park was an impressive leap ahead, and even the notoriously picky pros had to admit it.

“From what I’ve seen so far,” Martina Navratilova said, “they’ve thought of everything.”

Fans were even more impressed. Attendance was up 90 percent from the previous year; 244,859 people passed through the gates at Flinders in ’88, compared with 140,089 at Kooyong in ’87. The Australian Open had a new home, and permanent new date. From then on, it would lead off the Grand Slam season rather than bring up its rear.

But not everything went smoothly over the fortnight. Pat Cash, Australia’s best hope for a champion that year, had played in the South Africa Open the previous November. Cash was greeted in his first match at Flinders Park not with applause, but with black balls, thrown on court by an anti-apartheid group. Later, as the heat rose first to 100 degrees and then to 135 on the center court surface, the players began to have some second thoughts about the switch to an acrylic-based surface.

But the air cooled over the second week, and the stars, literally and figuratively, began to align for a fabulous finish. Evert recorded a rare late-career win over her rival Navratilova in the semis, while Cash kept Aussie title hopes alive by upsetting Ivan Lendl in five sets in the same round. Neither crowd favorite, though, could survive the gathering storms that they faced in the finals.

Evert admitted that she hadn’t thought past her semi with Navratilova. Now she had to contemplate an even scarier opponent. Nineteen-year-old Steffi Graf had spent the last three years revving her engines near the top of the women’s game; now she was poised to burn rubber—or at least Rebound Ace. She would begin the greatest season of the Open era by losing just 13 games in her first four matches at Flinders Park.

Evert might have asked herself a similar question at some point in the final. Graf had won their last four matches, and she looked sure to make it five when she raced to a 6-1, 5-1 lead. But Evert, a proud champion playing her last grand Slam final at age 33, fought back to take it to a tiebreaker before losing. Little did Chrissie know that no player would do better against Steffi at a major that year. Graf would go on to win them all, and turn her calendar-year Slam, the first since Margaret Court’s in 1970, to gold by winning at the Olympics in Seoul.

The following day broke with high hopes in Melbourne for the first homegrown men’s champion in a dozen years. What could be more fitting as a way to christen Flinders Park than for Cash, the best of his Aussie generation, to walk away the winner? One person in the arena disagreed. Wilander had spent the last three years retooling his grinder’s game, adding a slice one-handed backhand to his two-hander, and learning his way around the net. The pay-off came in ’88, and it began with his seesaw, three-hour, five-set, rain-delayed win over Cash in the final. The 74-minute final set is still one of the most memorable to played in Rod Laver Arena. But it didn’t end the way the home folks hoped.

“If I ruined the party just a little bit,” Wilander said, “that’s too bad.”

The Swede’s party was just getting started. He would come within three rounds of matching Graf’s calendar-year Slam. After Melbourne, he added his third French Open and only U.S. Open titles to his résumé. His only flay was a quarterfinal loss to Miloslav Mecir at Wimbledon.

For the Aussies, though, their brand new open couldn’t have gone much better. With all of the top players making the trip Down Under again, and Graf and Wilander starting historic seasons in Melbourne, tennis’s fourth Slam was suitably grand again.