Another year, another home-grown AO champion to look forward to | 23 January, 2025 | All News | News and Features | News and Events

For the 14th consecutive Australian Open, there will be at least one local champion across the tournament’s various events.

Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 23 January 2025 | Matt Trollope

AO 2025 is guaranteed to have at least one Australian champion by the fortnight’s end.

That was confirmed on Wednesday, when Kimberly Birrell and John-Patrick Smith set up an all-Australian mixed doubles final against Olivia Gadecki and John Peers.

The first all-Aussie final in the Open-era history of the event – and the first since the 1967 Australian Championships – will be staged on Friday. It means that for the 14th straight edition of the tournament, a local name will be inscribed on at least one AO trophy.

There could be more, given the ongoing success of other Aussies across several AO events.

World No.1 junior Emerson Jones is into the girls’ singles semifinals, as well as the final of the junior girls’ doubles event with Brit Hannah Klugman, while Ben Wenzel is through to the boys’ wheelchair doubles final.

With the introduction of the junior wheelchair division at Australian Open 2025, there are now 19 officially sanctioned events staged across the 15 days of the main draw at Melbourne Park:

• Men’s singles
• Women’s singles
• Men’s doubles
• Women’s doubles
• Mixed doubles
• Boys’ singles
• Girls’ singles
• Boys’ doubles
• Girls’ doubles
• Men’s wheelchair singles
• Women’s wheelchair singles
• Quad wheelchair singles
• Men’s wheelchair doubles
• Women’s wheelchair doubles
• Quad wheelchair doubles
• Boys’ wheelchair singles
• Girls’ wheelchair singles
• Boys’ wheelchair doubles
• Girls’ wheelchair doubles

You have to go back to AO 2011 to find the last time there were no Australian champions in any of the events.

In 37 completed editions of the AO at Melbourne Park, there have been only four other years – 1990, 2006, 2009 and 2010 – that did not feature at least one Aussie winner.

Since 2011 we’ve had champions in boys’ singles, such as the recently retired 2012 champion Luke Saville. We’ve seen Dylan Alcott dominate in the quad wheelchair division, both in singles and in doubles alongside Heath Davidson.

In four consecutive years (2013-16) there was an Australian champion in boys’ doubles, including Alex de Minaur – who reached the AO 2025 men’s singles quarterfinals – alongside Blake Ellis.

In women’s doubles, Sam Stosur hoisted the trophy with Zhang Shuai in 2019, while in four of the past eight completed AOs, there’s been an Australian winner in the men’s doubles – including three straight years from AO 2022 to 2024.

Most famously, Ash Barty become the women’s singles champion at Australian Open 2022 – the first Aussie singles champion in 44 years.

Nick Kyrgios, the AO 2022 men’s doubles winner with Thanasi Kokkinakis, also won the boys’ singles in 2013, the same year Matthew Ebden – the AO 2024 men’s doubles champion – won the mixed doubles with Jarmila Gajdosova.

Kyrgios and Ebden are among a select group of Australians to win more than one event at Melbourne Park.

Yet none have matched Todd Woodbridge’s feat of winning three different events since the tournament relocated in 1988. Woodbridge is a six-time AO champion – twice in boys’ doubles (1988-89), once in mixed doubles (1993) and three times in men’s doubles.

His 1992 and 1997 wins came alongside Mark Woodforde, before he was victorious again in 2001 with Swede Jonas Bjorkman.

AUSTRALIAN AO CHAMPIONS (SINCE 1988)

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